Vane.  It has charm.

Frust. I’d thought of “Pop goes the Weasel” with little Miggs.  We kind of want a cock-tail before “Louisa loses,” Mr Vane.

Vane.  Well, sir, you’ll see.

Frust. This your lighting?  It’s a bit on the spiritool side.  I’ve left my glass.  Guess I’ll sit in the front row.  Ha’f a minute.  Who plays this Orphoos?

Vane.  George Fleetway.

Frust. Has he got punch?

Vane.  It’s a very small part.

Frust. Who are the others?

Vane.  Guy Toone plays the Professor; Vanessa Hellgrove his wife;
Maude Hopkins the faun.

Frust. H’m!  Names don’t draw.

Vane.  They’re not expensive, any of them.  Miss Hellgrove’s a find,
I think.

Frust. Pretty?

Vane.  Quite.

Frust. Arty?

Vane. [Doubtfully] No. [With resolution] Look here, Mr Frust, it’s no use your expecting another “Pop goes the Weasel.”

Frust. We-ell, if it’s got punch and go, that’ll be enough for me. 
Let’s get to it!

     [He extinguishes his cigar and descends the steps and sits in
     the centre of the front row of the stalls.]

Vane.  Mr Foreson?

Foreson. [Appearing through curtain, Right] Sir?

Vane.  Beginners.  Take your curtain down.

     [He descends the steps and seats himself next to Frust. The
     curtain goes down.]

     [A woman’s voice is heard singing very beautifully Sullivan’s
     song:  “Orpheus with his lute, with his lute made trees and the
     mountain tops that freeze’.” etc.]

Frust. Some voice!

The curtain rises.  In the armchair the professor is yawning, tall, thin, abstracted, and slightly grizzled in the hair.  He has a pad of paper over his knee, ink on the stool to his right and the Encyclopedia volume on the stand to his left-barricaded in fact by the article he is writing.  He is reading a page over to himself, but the words are drowned in the sound of the song his wife is singing in the next room, partly screened off by the curtain.  She finishes, and stops.  His voice can then be heard conning the words of his article.

Prof.  “Orpheus symbolized the voice of Beauty, the call of life, luring us mortals with his song back from the graves we dig for ourselves.  Probably the ancients realized this neither more nor less than we moderns.  Mankind has not changed.  The civilized being still hides the faun and the dryad within its broadcloth and its silk.  And yet”—­[He stops, with a dried-up air-rather impatiently] Go on, my dear!  It helps the atmosphere.

     [The voice of his wife begins again, gets as far as “made them
     sing” and stops dead, just as the PROFESSOR’s pen is beginning
     to scratch.  And suddenly, drawing the curtain further aside]