"You know I feel awfully out of it here in this society of yours!"

"Out of it?" she exclaimed, and her voice thrilled as she resented his self-depreciation.

"It's over my head--right over it!"

"Now, Mr. Machin," she said, dropping somewhat that rich, low voice, "I quite understand that there are some things about the society you don't like, trifles that you're inclined to laugh at. _I_ know that. Many of us know it. But it can't be helped in an organisation like ours. It's even essential. Don't be too hard on us. Don't be sarcastic."

"But I'm not sarcastic!" he protested.

"Honest?" She turned to him quickly. He could descry her face in the gloom, and the forward bend of her shoulders, and the backward sweep of her arms resting on the seat, and the straight droop of her Egyptian shawl from her inclined body.

"Honest!" he solemnly insisted.

The exchange of this single word was so intimate that it shifted their conversation to a different level--a level at which each seemed to be a.s.suring the other that intercourse between them could never be aught but utterly sincere thenceforward, and that indeed in future they would const.i.tute a little society of their own, ideal in its organisation.

"Then you're too modest," she said decidedly. "There was no one here to-night who's more respected than you are. No one! Immediately I first spoke to you--I daresay you don't remember that afternoon at the Grand Babylon Hotel--I knew you weren't like the rest. And don't I know them? Don't I know them?"

"But how did you know I'm not like the rest?" asked Edward Henry. The line which she was taking had very much surprised him, and charmed him.

The compliment, so serious and urgent in tone, was intensely agreeable, and it made an entirely new experience in his career. He thought: "Oh!

There's no mistake about it. These London women are marvellous!

They're just as straight and in earnest as the best of our little lot down there. But they've got something else. There's no comparison!"

The unique word to describe the indescribable floated into his head: "Scrumptuous!" What could not life be with such semi-divine creatures?

He dreamt of art drawing-rooms softly shaded at midnight. And his att.i.tude towards even poetry was modified.

"I knew you weren't like the rest," said she, "by your look; by the way you say everything you _do_ say. We all know it. And I'm sure you're far more than clever enough to be perfectly aware that we all know it.

Just see how everyone looked at you to-night!"

Yes, he had in fact been aware of the glances.

"I think I ought to tell you," she went on, "that I was rather unfair to you that day in talking about my cousin--in the taxi. You were quite right to refuse to go into partnership with her. She thinks so too.

We've talked it over, and we're quite agreed. Of course it did seem hard--at the time, and her bad luck in America seemed to make it worse.

But you were quite right. You can work much better alone. You must have felt that instinctively--far quicker than we felt it."

"Well," he murmured, confused, "I don't know--"

Could this be she who had too openly smiled at his skirmish with an artichoke?

"Oh, Mr. Machin," she burst out, "you've got an unprecedented opportunity, and, thank Heaven, you're the man to use it! We're all expecting so much from you, and we know we sha'n't be disappointed."

"D'ye mean the theatre?" he asked, alarmed as it were amid rising waters.

"The theatre," said she gravely. "You're the one man that can save London. No one _in_ London can do it! ... _You_ have the happiness of knowing what your mission is, and of knowing too that you are equal to it. What good fortune! I wish I could say as much for myself. I want to do something! I try! But what can I do? Nothing--really! You've no idea of the awful loneliness that comes from a feeling of inability."

"Loneliness!" he repeated. "But surely--" He stopped.

"Loneliness," she insisted. Her little chin was now in her little hand, and her dim face upturned.

And suddenly a sensation of absolute and marvellous terror seized Edward Henry. He was more afraid than he had ever been--and yet once or twice in his life he had felt fear. His sense of true perspective--one of his most precious qualities--returned. He thought: "I've got to get out of this." Well, the door was not locked. It was only necessary to turn the handle, and security lay on the other side of the door! He had but to rise and walk. And he could not. He might just as well have been manacled in a prison-cell. He was under an enchantment.

"A man," murmured Elsie, "a man can never realise the loneliness--" She ceased.

He stirred uneasily.

"About this play," he found himself saying.

And yet why should he mention the play in his fright? He pretended to himself not to know why. But he knew why. His instinct had seen in the topic of the play the sole avenue of salvation.

"A wonderful thing, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes," he said; and then, most astonishingly to himself, added: "I've decided to do it."

"We knew you would," she said calmly. "At any rate I did.... You'll open with it of course."

"Yes," he answered desperately, and proceeded, with the most extraordinary bravery: "If you'll act in it."

Immediately on hearing these last words issue from his mouth he knew that a fool had uttered them, and that the bravery was mere rashness; for Elsie's responding gesture reinspired him afresh with the exquisite terror which he had already begun 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 n.o.body. 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 from the stage invaded the room. And in a second the enchantment was lifted from him. Several people entered. He sighed, saying within himself to the disturbers:

"I'd have given you a hundred-pound piece if you'd been five minutes sooner."

And yet simultaneously he regretted their arrival. And, more curious still, though he well remembered the warning words of Mr. Seven Sachs concerning Elsie April, he did not consider that they were justified.

She had not been a bit persuasive ... only...

VII.

He sat down to the pianisto with a strange and agreeable sense of security. It is true that, owing to the time of year, the drawing-room had been, in the figurative phrase, turned upside down by the process of spring-cleaning, which his unexpected arrival had surprised in fullest activity. But he did not mind that. He abode content among rolled carpets, a swathed chandelier, piled chairs, and walls full of pale rectangular s.p.a.ces where pictures had been. Early that morning, after a brief night 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 home--to the beings and things that he knew and that knew him.

In the train he had had the pleasure of reading in sundry newspapers that "The Orient Pearl," by Carlo Trent (who was mentioned in terms of startling respect and admiration), had been performed on the previous evening 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. E. H.

Machin ("that most enterprising and enlightened recruit to the ranks of theatrical managers ") for production at the new Regent Theatre. And further, that Mr. Machin intended to open with it. And still further, that his selection of such a play, which combined in the highest degree the poetry of Mr. W. B. Yeats with the critical intellectuality of Mr.

Bernard Shaw, was of excellent augury for London's dramatic future, and that the "upward movement" must on no account be thought 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 princ.i.p.al part Miss Rose Euclid, perhaps the greatest emotional actress the English-speaking 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 with ... etc., etc.) was Mr. E. H. Machin's acting manager and technical adviser. Edward Henry could trace the hand of Marrier in all the paragraphs. Marrier had lost no time.

Mrs. Machin, senior, came into the drawing-room just as he was adjusting the "Tannhauser" overture to the mechanician. The piece was one of his major favourites.

"This is no place for you, my lad," said Mrs. Machin grimly, glancing round the room. "But I came to tell ye as th' mutton's been cooling at least five minutes. You gave out as you were hungry."

"Keep your hair on, Mother," said he, springing up.