the wretched surroundings, the odoriferous food, the thick crockery, the smoke-palled vista of roofs and chimneys.  The genius of a Stevenson would have become dwarfed in such surroundings.  A phrase, a happy idea, suddenly caught his fancy.  He itched for a pencil and paper.  Then he looked up to find the one thing wanting.  Elizabeth Dalstan, followed by a maid carrying rugs and cushions, had paused, smiling, by his side.

“You have slept and you are better,” she said pleasantly.  “Now for the next few minutes you must please devote yourself to making me comfortable.  Put everything down, Phoebe.  Mr. Romilly will look after me.”

For a moment he paused before proceeding to his task.

“I want to look at you,” he confessed.  “Remember I have only seen you under the electric lights of the saloon, or in that queer, violet gloom of last night.  Why, you have quite light hair, and I thought it was dark!”

She laughed good-humouredly and turned slowly around.

“Here I am,” she announced, “a much bephotographed person.  Almost plain, some journalists have dared to call me, but for my expression.  On flowing lines, as you see, because I always wear such loose clothes, and yet, believe me, slim.  As a matter of fact,” she went on pensively, “I am rather proud of my figure.  A little journalist who had annoyed me, and to whom I was rude, once called it ample.  No one has ever ventured to say more.  The critics who love me, and they most of them love me because I am so exceptionally polite to them, and tell them exactly what to say about every new play, allude to my physique as Grecian.”

“But your eyes!” he exclaimed.  “Last night I thought they were grey.  This morning—­why, surely they are brown?”

“You see, that is all according to the light,” she confided.  “If any one does try to write a description of me, they generally evade the point by calling them browny-grey.  A young man who was in love with me,” she sighed, “but that was long ago, used to say that they reminded him of fallen leaves in a place where the sunlight sometimes is and sometimes isn’t.  And now, if you please, I want to be made exceedingly comfortable.  I want you to find the deck steward and see that I have some beef tea as quickly as possible.  I want my box of cigarettes on one side and my vanity case on the other, and I should like to listen to the plot of your play.”

He obeyed her behests with scrupulous care, leaned back in his chair and brought into the foreground of his mind the figures of those men and women who had told his story, finding them, to his dismay, unexpectedly crude and unlifelike.  And the story itself.  Was unhappiness so necessary, after all?  They suddenly seemed to crumble away into insignificance, these men and women of his creation.  In their place he could almost fancy a race of larger beings, a more extensive canvas, a more splendid, a riper and richer vocabulary.