change and get up on deck.
Will you wait for me in the saloon, outside? I shan't be ten minutes."

"Will I?" he laughed. "Your only trouble will be to keep me away from
your door, this trip." He gathered up his manuscript and steamer-cap,
then with his hand on the door-knob paused. "Oh, I forgot that blessed
bandbox!"

"Never mind that now," said Alison. "I'll have Jane repack it and take
it back to your steward. Besides, I'm in a hurry, stifling for fresh
air. Just give me twenty minutes...."

She offered him a hand, and he bowed his lips to it; then quietly let
himself out into the alleyway.

VI

IFF?

Late that night, Staff drifted into the smoking-room, which he found
rather sparsely patronised. This fact surprised him no less than its
explanation: it was after eleven o'clock. He had hardly realised the
flight of time, so absorbed had he been all evening in argument with
Alison Landis.

There remained in the smoking-room, at this late hour, but half a dozen
detached men, smoking and talking over their nightcaps, and one table of
bridge players--in whose number, of course, there was Mr. Iff.

Nodding abstractedly to the little man, Staff found a quiet corner and
sat him down with a sigh and a shake of his head that illustrated
vividly his frame of mind. He was a little blue and more than a little
distressed. And this was nothing but natural, since he was still in the
throes of the discovery that one man can hardly with success play the
dual role of playwright and sweetheart to a successful actress.

Alison was charming, he told himself, a woman incomparable, tenderly
sweet and desirable; and he loved her beyond expression. But ... his
play was also more than a slight thing in his life. It meant a good deal
to him; he had worked hard and put the best that was in him into its
making; and hard as the work had been, it had been a labour of love. He
wasn't a man to overestimate his ability; he possessed a singularly sane
and clear appreciation of the true value of his work, harbouring no
illusions as to his real status either as dramatist or novelist. But at
the same time, he knew when he had done good work. And _A Single Woman_
promised to be a good play, measured by modern standards: not great, but
sound and clear and strong. The plot was of sufficient originality to
command attention; the construction was clear, sane, inevitable; he had
mixed the elements of comedy and drama with the deftness of a s