aised on posts above the hoardings, and read the following:

SITE

OF THE

FIRST NEW THOUGHT CHURCH

to be opened next Spring.

Subscriptions invited.

Rollo Wrissell: _Senior Trustee_. Ralph Alloyd: _Architect_.
Dicks & Pato: _Builders_.

The name of Rollo Wrissell seemed familiar to him, and after a few
moments' searching he recalled that Rollo Wrissell was one of the
trustees and executors of the late Lord Woldo, the other being the
widow--and the mother of the new Lord Woldo. In addition to the
lettering the notice-board held a graphic representation of the First
New Thought Church as it would be when completed.

"Well," said Edward Henry, not perhaps unjustifiably, "this really is
a bit thick! Here I've got an option on a plot of land for building a
theatre, and somebody else has taken it to put up a church!"

He ventured inside the hoarding, and addressing the elegant young man
asked:

"You got anything to do with this, mister?"

"Well," said the young man, smiling humorously, "I'm the architect.
It's true that nobody ever pays any attention to an architect in these
days."

"Oh! You're Mr. Alloyd?"

"I am."

Mr. Alloyd had black hair, intensely black, changeful eyes, and the
expressive mouth of an actor.

"I thought they were going to build a theatre here," said Edward
Henry.

"I wish they had been!" said Mr. Alloyd. "I'd just like to design a
theatre! But of course I shall never get the chance."

"Why not?"

"I know I shan't," Mr. Alloyd insisted with gloomy disgust. "Only
obtained this job by sheer accident! ... You got any ideas about
theatres?"

"Well, I have," said Edward Henry.

Mr. Alloyd turned on him with a sardonic and half-benevolent gleam.

"And what are your ideas about theatres?"

"Well," said Edward Henry, "I should like to meet an architect who had
thoroughly got it into his head that when people pay for seats to see
a play they want to be able to _see_ it, and not just get a look at it
now and then over other people's heads and round corners of boxes and
things. In most theatres that I've been in the architects seemed to
think that iron pillars and wooden heads are transparent. Either
that, or the architects were rascals! Same with hearing! The pit costs
half-a-crown, and you don't pay half-a-crown to hear glasses rattled
in a bar or motor-omnibuses rushing down the street. I was never yet
in a London theatre where the architect had reall