“Not to-night,” Philip answered quickly.  “Tell the waiter to send up a simple dinner for two—­I can’t bother to order.  And two cocktails,” he added, as an afterthought.

Martha stared after the disappearing manservant disparagingly.

“Some style,” she muttered.  “A manservant, eh?  Don’t know as I ever saw one before off the stage.”

“Don’t be silly,” he remonstrated.  “He has four other flats to look after besides mine.  It’s the way one lives, nowadays, cheaper than ordinary hotels or rooms.  Take off your coat.”

She obeyed him, depositing it carefully in a safe place.  Then she strolled around the room, finding pictures little to her taste, and finally threw herself into an easy-chair.

“Are we going to work before we eat?” she asked.

“No, afterwards,” he told her.  “Have a cigarette?”

She held it between her fingers but declined a match.

“I’ll wait for the cocktails,” she decided.  “Now listen here, Mr. Ware, there’s a word or two I’d like to say to you.”

“Go ahead,” he invited listlessly.

“You men,” she continued, looking him squarely in the face, “think a lot too much of yourselves.  You think so much of yourselves that as often as not you’ve no time to think of other folk.  A month or so ago who were you?  You were hiding in a cheap tenement house, scared out of your wits, dressed pretty near as shabbily as I was, with a detective on your track, and with no idea of what you were going to do for a living.  And now look at you.  Who’s done it all?”

“Of course, my play being successful,” he began—­

She broke in at once.

“You and your play!  Who took your play?  Who produced it at the New York Theatre and acted in it so that people couldn’t listen without a sob in their throats and a tingling all over?  Yours isn’t the only play in the world!  I bet Miss Dalstan has a box full of them.  She probably chose yours because she knew that you were feeling pretty miserable, because she’d got sorry for you coming over on the steamer, because she has a great big heart, and is always trying to do something for others.  She’s made a man of you.  Oh!  I know a bit about plays.  I know that with the royalties you’re drawing you can well afford rooms like these and anything else you want.  But that isn’t all she’s done.  She’s introduced you to her friends, she’s taken more notice of you than any man around.  She takes you out automobile driving, she lets you spend all your spare time in her rooms.  She don’t mind what people say.  You dine with her and take her home after the play.  You have more of her than any other person alive.  Say, what I want to ask is—­do you think you’re properly grateful?”

“I couldn’t ever repay Miss Dalstan,” he acknowledged, a little sadly, “but—­”

“Look here, no ’buts’!” she interrupted.  “You think I don’t know anything.  Perhaps I don’t, and perhaps I do.  I was standing in the door of the office when you two came in from your automobile drive this afternoon.  I saw her come away without wishing you good-by, then I saw her turn and nod, looking just as usual, and I saw her face afterwards.  If I had had you, my man, as close to me then as you are now, I’d have boxed your ears.”