e hall and those of its field-marshal, who paraded
him stonily to the elevator. Mr. Potter's apartment was upon the twelfth
floor, a facet stated in a monosyllable by the field-marshal, and
confirmed, upon the opening of the cage at that height, by Mr. Potter's
voice melodiously belling a flourish of laughter on the other side of
a closed door bearing his card. It was rich laughter, cadenced and deep
and loud, but so musically modulated that, though it might never seem
impromptu, even old Carson Tinker had once declared that he liked to
listen to it almost as much as Potter did.

Old Carson Tinker was listening to it now, as Canby discovered, after
a lisping Japanese had announced him at the doorway of a cream-coloured
Louis Sixteenth salon: an exquisite apartment, delicately personalized
here and there by luxurious fragilities which would have done
charmingly, on the stage, for a marquise's boudoir. Old Tinker, in
evening dress, sat uncomfortably, sideways, upon the edge of a wicker
and brocade "chaise lounge," finishing a tiny glass of chartreuse, while
Talbot Potter, in the middle of the room, took leave of a second guest
who had been dining with him.

Potter was concluding the rendition of hilarity which had penetrated to
the outer hall, and, merely waving the playwright toward Tinker, swept
the same gesture upward to complete it by resting a cordial hand
upon the departing guest's shoulder. This personage, a wasp-figured,
languorous youth, with pale plastered hair over a talcum face, flicked
his host lightly upon the breast with a pair of white gloves.

"None the less, Pottuh," he said, "why shouldn't you play Othello as a
mulatto? I maintain, you see, it would be taking a step in technique;
they'd get the face, you see. Then I want you to do something really and
truly big: Oedipus. Why not Oedipus? Think of giving the States a thing
like Oedipus done as you could do it! Of coss, I don't say you could
ever be another Mewnay-Sooyay. No. I don't go that far. You haven't
Mewnay-Sooyay's technique. But you could give us just the savour of
Attic culture--at least the savour, you see. The mere savour would be
something. Why should you keep on producing these cheap little plays
they foist on you? Oh, I know you always score a personal success in
the wahst of them, but they've never given you a Big character--and
the play, outside of you, is always piffle. Of coss, you know what
I've always wanted you to do, what I've co