"_Aren't_ you?" protested Rose Euclid, shocked.

"Of course I'm not," said Carlo. "I told you before, and I tell you now, that there's only one name for the theatre--'The Muses' Theatre!'"

"Perhaps you're right!" Rose agreed, as if a swift revelation had come to her. "Yes, you're right."

("She'll make a cheerful sort of partner for a fellow," thought Edward Henry, "if she's in the habit of changing her mind like that every thirty seconds." His appet.i.te had gone. He could only drink.)

"Naturally, I'm right! Aren't we going to open with my play, and isn't my play in verse? ... I'm sure you'll agree with me, Mr. Machin, that there is no real drama except the poetical drama."

Edward Henry was entirely at a loss. Indeed, he was drowning in his dressing-gown, so favourable to the composition of hexameters.

"Poetry..." he vaguely breathed.

"Yes, sir," said Carlo Trent. "Poetry."

"I've never read any poetry in my life," said Edward Henry, like a desperate criminal. "Not a line."

Whereupon Carlo Trent rose up from his seat, and his eye-gla.s.ses dangled in front of him.

"Mr. Machin," said he with the utmost benevolence. "This is the most interesting thing I've ever come across. Do you know, you're precisely the man I've always been wanting to meet? ... The virgin mind. The clean slate.... Do you know, you're precisely the man that it's my ambition to write for?"

"It's very kind of you," said Edward Henry feebly, beaten, and consciously beaten.

(He thought miserably: "What would Nellie think if she saw me in this gang?")

Carlo Trent went on, turning to Rose Euclid:

"Rose, will you recite those lines of Nashe?"

Rose Euclid began to blush.

"That bit you taught me the day before yesterday?"

"Only the three lines! No more! They are the very essence of poetry--poetry at its purest. We'll see the effect of them on Mr.

Machin. We'll just see. It's the ideal opportunity to test my theory.

Now, there's a good girl!"

"Oh! I can't. I'm too nervous," stammered Rose.

"You can, and you must," said Carlo, gazing at her in homage. "n.o.body in the world can say them as well as you can. Now!"

Rose Euclid stood up.

"One moment," Carlo stopped her. "There's too much light. We can't do with all this light. Mr. Machin--do you mind?"

A wave of the hand, and all the lights were extinguished, save a lamp on the mantelpiece, and in the disconcertingly darkened room Rose Euclid turned her face towards the ray from this solitary silk-shaded globe.

Her hand groped out behind her, found the table-cloth and began to scratch it agitatedly. She lifted her head. She was the actress, impressive and subjugating, and Edward Henry felt her power. Then she intoned:

"_Brightness falls from the air;_ _Queens have died young and fair;_ _Dust hath closed Helen's eye._"

And she ceased and sat down. There was a silence.

"_Bravo!_" murmured Carlo Trent.

"_Bravo!_" murmured Mr. Marrier.

Edward Henry in the gloom caught Mr. Seven Sachs's unalterable observant smile across the table.

"Well, Mr. Machin?" said Carlo Trent.

Edward Henry had felt a tremor at the vibrations of Rose Euclid's voice.

But the words she uttered had set up no clear image in his mind, unless it might be of some solid body falling from the air, or of a young woman named Helen walking along Trafalgar Road, Bursley, on a dusty day, and getting the dust in her eyes. He knew not what to answer.

"Is that all there is of it?" he asked at length.

Carlo Trent said:

"It's from Thomas Nashe's 'Song in Time of Pestilence.' The closing lines of the verse are:

"_I am sick, I must die--_ _Lord, have mercy on me!_"

"Well," said Edward Henry, recovering, "I rather like the end. I think the end's very appropriate."

Mr. Seven Sachs choked over his wine, and kept on choking.

III.

Mr. Marrier was the first to recover from this blow to the prestige of poetry. Or perhaps it would be more honest to say that Mr. Marrier had suffered no inconvenience from the contretemps. His apparent gleeful zest in life had not been impaired. He was a born optimist, of an extreme type unknown beyond the circ.u.mferences of theatrical circles.

"I _say_," he emphasised, "I've got an ideah. We ought to be photographed like that. Do you no end of good." He glanced encouragingly at Rose Euclid. "Don't you see it in the ill.u.s.trated papers? 'A prayvate supper-party at Wilkins's Hotel. Miss Ra-ose Euclid reciting verse at a discussion of the plans for her new theatre in Piccadilly Circus. The figures reading from left to right are: Mr. Seven Sachs, the famous actor-author; Miss Rose Euclid; Mr. Carlo Trent, the celebrated dramatic poet; Mr. Alderman Machin, the well-known Midlands capitalist,' and so on!" Mr. Marrier repeated, "and so on."

"It's a notion," said Rose Euclid dreamily.

"But how _can_ we be photographed?" Carlo Trent demanded with irritation.

"Perfectly easy."

"Now?"

"In ten minutes. I know a photographer in Brook Street."

"Would he come at once?" Carlo Trent frowned at his watch.