“You are going to do me for Mr. Fox,” Mrs. Hartly said, turning her large grey eyes upon me.  They were very soft.  They seemed to send out waves of intense sympatheticism.  I thought of those others that had shot out a razor-edged ray.

“Why,” I answered, “there was some talk of my doing somebody for the Hour.”

Fox put my manuscript under his empty tumbler.

“Yes,” he said, sharply.  “He will do, I think.  H’m, yes.  Why, yes.”

“You’re a friend of Mr. Callan’s, aren’t you?” Mrs. Hartly asked, “What a dear, nice man he is!  You should see him at rehearsals.  You know I’m doing his ‘Boldero’; he’s given me a perfectly lovely part—­perfectly lovely.  And the trouble he takes.  He tries every chair on the stage.”

“H’m; yes,” Fox interjected, “he likes to have his own way.”

“We all like that,” the great actress said.  She was quoting from her first great part.  I thought—­but, perhaps, I was mistaken—­that all her utterances were quotations from her first great part.  Her husband looked at his watch.

“Are you coming to this confounded flower show?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, turning her mysterious eyes upon him, “I’ll go and get ready.”

She disappeared through an inner door.  I expected to hear the pistol-shot and the heavy fall from the next room.  I forgot that it was not the end of the fifth act.

Fox put my manuscript into his breast pocket.

“Come along, Granger,” he said to me, “I want to speak to you.  You’ll have plenty of opportunity for seeing Mrs. Hartly, I expect.  She’s tenth on your list.  Good-day, Hartly.”

Hartly’s hand was wavering between his moustache and his watch pocket.

“Good-day,” he said sulkily.

“You must come and see me again, Mr. Granger,” Mrs. Hartly said from the door.  “Come to the Buckingham and see how we’re getting on with your friend’s play.  We must have a good long talk if you’re to get my local colour, as Mr. Fox calls it.”

   “To gild refined gold; to paint the lily,
   To throw a perfume on the violet—­”

I quoted banally.

“That’s it,” she said, with a tender smile.  She was fastening a button in her glove.  I doubt her recognition of the quotation.

When we were in our hansom, Fox began: 

“I’m relieved by what I’ve seen of your copy.  One didn’t expect this sort of thing from you.  You think it a bit below you, don’t you?  Oh, I know, I know.  You literary people are usually so impracticable; you know what I mean.  Callan said you were the man.  Callan has his uses; but one has something else to do with one’s paper.  I’ve got interests of my own.  But you’ll do; it’s all right.  You don’t mind my being candid, do you, now?” I muttered that I rather liked it.

“Well then,” he went on, “now I see my way.”

“I’m glad you do,” I murmured.  “I wish I did.”