Languid lord. [To the young man standing there aghast] What’s this?  Friend of yours?

Young man.  My God!  She was a lady.  That’s all I know about her.

Languid lord.  A lady!

[The blond and dark gentlemen have slipped from the room; and out of the supper-party’s distant laughter comes suddenly a long, shrill:  “Gone away!” And the sound of the horn playing the seven last notes of the old song:  “This day a stag must die!” From the last note of all the sound flies up to an octave higher, sweet and thin, like a spirit passing, till it is drowned once more in laughter.  The young man has covered his eyes with his hands; Arnaud is crossing himself fervently; the languid lord stands gazing, with one of the dropped gardenias twisted in his fingers; and the woman, bending over Clare, kisses her forehead.]

CURTAIN.

THE PIGEON

A Fantasy in Three Acts

PERSONS OF THE PLAY

Christopher Wellwyn, an artist
Ann, his daughter
Guinevere Megan, a flower-seller
Rory Megan, her husband
Ferrand, an alien
Timson, once a cabman
Edward Bertley, a Canon
Alfred Calway, a Professor
sir Thomas Hoxton, a Justice of the Peace
Also a police constable, three humble-men, and some curious persons

The action passes in Wellwyn’s Studio, and the street outside.

Act I. Christmas Eve.

Act II.  New Year’s Day.

Act III.  The First of April.

ACT I

It is the night of Christmas Eve, the scene is a Studio, flush with the street, having a skylight darkened by a fall of snow.  There is no one in the room, the walls of which are whitewashed, above a floor of bare dark boards.  A fire is cheerfully burning.  On a model’s platform stands an easel and canvas.  There are busts and pictures; a screen, a little stool, two arm. chairs, and a long old-fashioned settle under the window.  A door in one wall leads to the house, a door in the opposite wall to the model’s dressing-room, and the street door is in the centre of the wall between.  On a low table a Russian samovar is hissing, and beside it on a tray stands a teapot, with glasses, lemon, sugar, and a decanter of rum.  Through a huge uncurtained window close to the street door the snowy lamplit street can be seen, and beyond it the river and a night of stars.

The sound of a latchkey turned in the lock of the street door, and Ann Wellwyn enters, a girl of seventeen, with hair tied in a ribbon