reported that you have performed the wonderful, the impossible,"
Lindsay said; "that Llewellyn Stanhope goes home solvent."

"I don't know how he can help it now. But I have to be very firm. He's
on his knees to me to do Ibsen. I tell him I will if he'll combine with
Jimmy Finnigan and bring the Surprise Party on between the acts. The
only way it would go, in this capital."

"Oh, do produce Ibsen," Alicia exclaimed; "I've never seen one of his
plays--doesn't it sound terrible!"

"If people will elect to live upon a coral strand--oh, I should like to,
for you and Duff here, but Ibsen is the very last man to deliver to a
scratch company. He must have equal merit, or there's no meaning.
You see he makes none of the vulgar appeals. It would be a tame
travesty--nobody could redeem it alone. You must keep to the old
situations, the reliable old dodges, when you play in any part of Asia."

"I never shall cease to regret that I didn't see you in The Offence of
Galilee?" Duff said. "Everyone who knows the least bit about it said you
were marvellous in that."

"Marvellous," said Alicia

Hilda gazed straight before her for an instant without speaking. The
others looked at her absent eyes. "A bazar trick or two helped me,"
she said, and glanced with vivacity at any other subject that might be
hanging on the wall, or visible out of the window.

"And are you really invincible about not putting it on again in
Calcutta?" Duff asked.

"Not in Calcutta, or anywhere. The rest hate it--nobody has a chance but
me," Hilda said, and got up.

"Oh, I don't know," Alicia began, but Miss Howe was already half-way
out of the discussion, in the direction of the door. There was often a
brusqueness in her comings and goings, but she usually left a flavour of
herself behind. One turned with facility to talk about her, this being
the easiest way of applying the stimulus that came of talking to her.
It was more conspicuous than either of these two realised that they
accepted her retreat without a word, that there was even between them a
consciousness of satisfaction that she had gone.

"This morning's mail," said Alicia, smiling brightly at Lindsay,
"brought you a letter, I know." It was extraordinary how detached she
could be from her vital personal concern in him. It seemed relegated
to some background of her nature while she occupied herself with the
immediate play of circumstance or was lost in her observation of him.

"How kind of you