Part 43 (1/2)

I these last words issue from his mouth he knew that a fool had uttered them, and that the bravery was esture reinspired hiun to conjure away

”You think Miss Euclid ought to have the part,” he added quickly, before she could speak

”Oh! I do!” cried Elsie, positively and eagerly ”Rose will do simply wonders with that part You see she can speak verse I can't I'm nobody I only took it because--”

”Aren't you anybody?” he contradicted ”Aren't you anybody? I can just tell you--”

There he was again, bringing back the delicious terror! An astounding situation!

But the door creaked The babble froe invaded the room

And in a second the enchanthed, saying within hiiven you a hundred pounds apiece if you'd been five retted their arrival And,words of Mr Seven Sachs concerning Elsie April, he did not consider that they were justified She had not been a bit persuasiveonly

VII

He sat down to the pianisto with a strange and agreeable sense of security It is true that, owing to the tiurative phrase, turned upside down by the process of spring-cleaning, which his unexpected arrival had surprised in fullest activity But he did notrolled carpets, a swathed chandelier, piled chairs, and walls full of pale rectangular spaces where pictures had been Early that ht spent partly in bed and partly in erect contemplation of his immediate past and his immediate future, he had hurried back to his pianisto and his hos that he knew and that knew hi in sundry newspapers that ”The Orient Pearl,” by Carlo Trent (asrespect and ad at the dramatic soiree of the Azure Society, with all the usual accompaniments of secrecy and exclusiveness, in its private theatre in Kensington, and had been accepted on the spot by Mr EH

Machin (”that htened recruit to the ranks of theatrical ent Theatre And further that Mr Machin intended to open with it And still further that his selection of such a play, which coree the poetry of Mr WB Yeats with the critical intellectuality of Mr Bernard Shaas an excellent augury for London's dramatic future, and that the ”upward ht to have failed because of the failure of certain recent ill-judged attempts, by persons who did not understand their business, to force it in particular directions And still further that he, Edward Henry, had engaged for the principal part Miss Rose Euclid, perhaps the greatest e peoples had ever had, but who unfortunately had not been sufficiently seen of late on the London stage, and that this would be her first appearance after her recent artistic successes in the United States And lastly that Mr

Marrier (whose name would be remembered in connection withetc, etc) was Mr EH Machin's acting er and technical adviser

Edward Henry could trace the hand of Marrier in all the paragraphs

Marrier had lost no ti-roo the ”Tannhauser” overture to the mechanician The piece was one of his major favourites

”This is no place for you,round the roo at least five ry”

”Keep your hair on,up

Barely twelve hours earlier he had beenthe elect and the select and the intellectual and the poetic and the aristocratic; aed lips and blue hose and fixed sis; in the centre of the universe And he had conducted hily nobody, on the previous night, could have guessed from the cut of his fancy waistcoat or the judiciousness of his responses to remarks about verse, that his wife often wore a white apron, or that his ht many of the tricks of that metropolitan environment But now they all fell away from him, and he was just Edward Henry--nay, he was alain

”Who chose this mutton?” he asked as he bent over the juicy and rich joint and cut therefro-knife like a razor

”_I_ did, if ye want to know,” said his ed

”No It's fine”

”Yes,” said she ”I'rand hotels as you call 'em”

”We don't,” said Edward Henry First, it was true; and secondly, he was anxious to be propitiatory, for he had a plan to further