much more cheerful. We had a great
lunch at Durand's and he was at his very best. I asked him about his
health.

"I'm all right, Frank, but the rash continually comes back, a ghostly
visitant, Frank: I'm afraid the doctors are in league with the devil. It
generally returns after a good dinner, a sort of aftermath of champagne.
The doctors say I must not drink champagne, and must stop smoking, the
silly people, who regard pleasure as their natural enemies; whereas it
is our pleasures which provide them with a living!"

He looked fairly well, I thought; he was a little fatter, his skin a
little dingier than of old, and he had grown very deaf, but in every
other way he seemed at his best, though he was certainly drinking too
freely--spirits between times as well as wine at meals.

I had heard on the Riviera during the winter that Smithers had tried to
buy a play from him, so one day I brought up the subject.

"By the way, Smithers says that you have been working on your play; you
know the one I mean, the one with the great screen scene in it."

"Oh, yes, Frank," he remarked indifferently.

"Won't you tell me what you've done?" I asked. "Have you written any of
it?"

"No, Frank," he replied casually, "it's the scenario Smithers talked
about."

A little while afterwards he asked me for money. I told him I could not
afford any at the moment, and pressed him to write his play.

"I shall never write again, Frank," he said. "I can't, I simply can't
face my thoughts. Don't ask me!" Then suddenly: "Why don't you buy the
scenario and write the play yourself?"

"I don't care for the stage," I replied; "it's a sort of rude encaustic
work I don't like; its effects are theatrical!"

"A play pays far better than a book, you know--"

But I was not interested. That evening thinking over what he had said, I
realised all at once that a story I had in mind to write would suit
"the screen scene" of Oscar's scenario; why shouldn't I write a play
instead of a story? When we met next day I broached the idea to Oscar:

"I have a story in my head," I said, "which would fit into that scenario
of yours, so far as you have sketched it to me. I could write it as a
play and do the second, third and fourth acts very quickly, as all the
personages are alive to me. Could you do the first act?"

"Of course I could, Frank."

"But," I said, "will you?"

"What would be the good, you could not sell it, Frank."

"In any case," I went on, "