'But of course, he's practically a stranger to me now,' she said. 'And I never had much in common with him. What a farce it is, all this talk about family feeling and blood being thicker than water. I am quite prepared to accept the physiological fact that blood is thicker than water. But what does that prove? That I can make my brother understand how I feel about things? Nonsense!'

The sleepy waiter was hovering by their table. It was long after eleven, but Eleanor made no move to go, and Roger was well content that he should sit and watch the pink light from the lamp flushing her grave and rather stubborn face. He thought her casual, grave, reckless, and a little scornful. Her contempt for the Church, her indifference to her own interests, and her half-mocking admiration for her cousin Caroline attracted him. When at last she rose, pulling on her big gauntlets, and yawning, he was conscious of acute regret. 'Must we go?' he said.

'It's nearly midnight, and I've got to garage my car - and work to-morrow.'

'So have I - to work to-morrow, I mean. Can't I garage your car for you?' 'Can you drive?'

'My people had an Austin - and I had a tumbledown Singer for some years.'

'I forgot that clergymen did those sort of ordinary things that real men do.' 'And I am not a real man?'

'Well, clergymen somehow aren't quite proper men, are they?'

'Aren't they? The devil they aren't,' he laughed, but he was stung. He could have borne deliberate insult, but this indifferent assumption infuriated him. Not quite a proper man? He'd like to show her.

Inwardly raging, outwardly polite, he walked back with her to the car, escorted her from the garage to the club and said good night. Then he set off to walk home through the empty lamplit and moonlit streets.

Somehow or other, he told himself, he was responsible for Eleanor de la Roux's rash investment. It was therefore his duty to inquire into the prospects of the Christian Cinema Company and make quite sure what damage he had done. Eleanor must not be allowed to lose all her money. It was absurd - a girl like her, throwing away her capital like that. He became quite excited about it, and determined to call upon Miss Denton-Smyth as soon as possible, extract the whole truth from her and prevent her robbery of orphans.

Then he called himself a fool, for the girl was perfectly capable of looking after her own interests. She was hard and keen and efficient. She did not want interference in her affairs, especially by someone who was not quite a proper man. The comic curate, he said to himself. That is how she sees me - the comic curate, living on milk and buns.

He strode home to bed, his long legs devouring the distance between Eleanor's club and his Clergy House. He went to his bleak, cell-like room and spent a very long time in rather violent prayer. When he fell asleep he dreamed that he attended again the Women's Social Evening of an East End Club in which he once had worked.

In the gaunt whitewashed hall a band played jazz music. On the floor three couples of young girls were dancing together, their charming faces intent, their young slim bodies moving with grave precision. Their hair was waved, their lips scarlet, their dresses of cheap satin or mercerized cotton symbolized their youth, their pride, their vitality and self-respect. They danced with sensuous yet sober pleasure, proud, sweet, slim, lovely, unbroken things. Against the wall sat a row of older women. Their wedding rings had sunk into the flesh of their crippled fingers. Their grey sagging faces drooped into slackened necks which slid into huge, shapeless bosoms and distended stomachs. Their swollen legs bulged out of broken shoes. Life, work, child-bearing and poverty had torn their bodies, making hideous what had been lovely, draining their vitality and robbing them of self-respect. They laughed with toothless pleasure over bawdy jokes; they tapped their feet in response to the music; they clapped their gnarled, grime-stained hands. They watched the young girls dancing, making from time to time unseemly jests in husky undertones.

And it seemed to Roger that as he watched one gross and toothless and misshapen hag, she changed slowly before his eyes into the straight, clean, definite personality of Eleanor de la Roux, and began to dance, gravely and quietly, among the girls. He rushed out to greet her, calling to her, 'Eleanor, Eleanor. Dance with me. Dance with me!' But she turned her indifferent contemptuous face towards him, and said, 'A comic curate. Not even a proper man.' In fury he leapt at her, catching her by the shoulders and shaking her, until she changed again, while in his arms, to the toothless, shapeless, quavering old woman.

He woke up suddenly, sweating with terror, to find himself alone with a sword of moonlight falling across his bed.

§3

Three or four days passed before he found time to call upon Miss Denton-Smyth. He found himself at about six o'clock one evening passing close to Lucretia Road, and decided to find out if she were in. He would insist upon knowing just what was the position of the Christian Cinema Company. After all, she had frequently asked him to help her. He could not be expected to give his support to a movement that he did not understand.

He hardly noticed the external appearance of 40 Lucretia Road. He was accustomed to dark staircases and grimy corridors. He knocked at her door, but heard no answer. He knocked again.

This time there was a faint movement inside the room.

'Is Miss Denton-Smyth in?' he asked. 'It's Mortimer -Roger Mortimer here.'

'Oh, wait a minute. I've only just got in. I'll put the light on.'

'Is it an awkward time to come? Shall I go away?'

'Oh, no, no, no.'

She opened the door now, and he moved forward into an unlighted room.

'I can't - I can't find the matches,' half-whispered a muffled voice.

'It's all right. I've got some."

He felt for his matches.

'Shall I light the gas?'

'Oh, please.'

He lit the gas. He saw the comfortless disorder of her room. He saw her coat and hat flung on to the bed where she too had obviously been lying until he came. He saw her face working and quivering with emotion.

'I - hadn't time -' she gasped. 'Just in from the office. Rather tired.'

And she crumpled up into a chair and began to cry.

'Ah - look here - you're tired - can't I light your fire for you?'

He had encountered similar situations before and invented a technique with which to face them. He lit the fire, plumped out the cushions and drew the faded curtains. She could not speak, though her tears were drying, and she could lie back against the armchair into which he had pressed her, and wait there for more miracles to happen.

Gradually she recovered her self-possession, laughed a little, and asked him to fill the kettle, explaining that she had come in from the office too tired to make the tea, or shop, or do anything.

'Well, you'll have to let me be your errand-boy. What do you get for tea?'

'Anything. Everything. I don't think there's anything in the house at all. But there's about sevenpence halfpenny in my purse.'

'Very good. I'll see what one can do on sevenpence halfpenny.'

He ran down the stairs again, thinking rapidly. Caroline's condition had entirely destroyed his earlier intention. She looked really ill as she lay back in her chair, unable to control her tears of exhaustion. This was not the moment for stern reproaches and the high hand of pastoral indignation.

He went from shop to shop, buying recklessly milk, eggs, cheese, butter, bread, tea, a bottle of brandy and a large Madeira cake, a box of crystallized fruits and a pound of sugar. Returning, laden with parcels, he passed a boy wheeling a barrow bright with mauve, pink and scarlet tulips. His purse was almost empty, but on an impulse he stopped, bought a tight scarlet bunch of tulips, and ran back to Caroline's room, dropping butter and the Madeira cake on the stairs.

She heard him coming and opened the door. She had recovered a little by this, tidied her hair and spread the tablecloth. The fire blazed; the kettle puffed. With a child's pleasure she watched him unpack his parcels; but when she saw the tulips she almost wept again.

'Oh, flowers-'she cried. 'Oh, flowers.' And buried her face in them.

Embarrassed now by his exuberance, uncertain if it had been in the best of taste, he murmured, 'Oh well, when one is tired flowers are rather pleasant. And I am always looking for an excuse to buy them.'

He cut the bread and butter, boiled the eggs and insisted that she should drink one tablespoonful of brandy in strong tea before she filled her cup up properly. 'My mother swore by it as a pick-me-up.' 'Won't you have some?' 'I'm not tired.'

'Your hair's wet. Is it raining?'

'No. I've been bathing-in the Victoria Baths-rather absurd it sounds, doesn't it? But it's about the quickest means of getting exercise, and I take a batch of young urchins on Thursday afternoons straight after school and make 'em dive. All my scouts are going in for their swimmers' badges.' 'Do you dive?' 'Mildly.'

He was a brilliant diver. Too short-sighted for proficiency at games, he had specialized in running, swimming and hurdling. Since he came to London he had found that his athletic accomplishments gave him a greater hold over the boys' clubs and young men's classes than either his learning or his asceticism.

'I'll tell you something, Miss Denton-Smyth,' he confessed, chasing an egg round the pan with a small teaspoon. 'I use my diving purely for effect. It's the only spectacular accomplishment I have. The Boy Scouts and Young Men's Guilds and so forth think me rather a poor worm, for I'm no good at all at Bright Brief Brotherly talks. But I learnt to swim in the Cher when I was about four, I should think, and diving and so on are almost second nature to me. Salt? Salt? Where do you keep it? In this cupboard? Are the eggs hard enough? It's a disquieting reflection upon the influence of the Church, that one can't really do anything with these young creatures by precept or practice, but if one says "Come and see me do swallow-dives on Thursday" they sink into the most complete docility.'

'I should like to see you do it.'

'Oh, it's a remarkable performance, I assure you. The trouble is that I had the arrogance to think that my work was to lead souls to God, whereas what I can really do is to lead bodies to the bathing-pool, -

"And all that teacheth man to dread . . . .

The bath as little as the bed." '

He was talking nonsense to gain time while she recovered her strength and spirit under the influence of tulips, tea, and miracles. She squared her shoulders again and a bright spot of colour burned in each cheek. She began to make jokes, to talk jubilantly and criticize his latest sermon. In the face of such recovery, he felt able to get to business.

'You know, Miss Denton-Smyth, you asked me a little while ago to use such small influence as I have on behalf of the Christian Cinema Company.'

'Yes, yes indeed, and I can't tell you how pleased I am, because once we can have the interest of the Church I know that is just what we are needing. You see, the omens have been very propitious lately. Did I tell you about the very nice notice we had in the Christian Herald? And another in the Methodist Free Press about the little lecture I gave at Willesden last week? I tell you, it spreads; it spreads.'

'What I really wanted to know,' Roger began; but she interrupted him.

'You see, I've written to Lady Huntingdon, and her secretary says she's coming back in March. I know she's very well off, because I read in the papers about her husband's will, and she is sole legatee, and that means quite twelve thousand a year, if not more, and really with all that money she should be able to spare us just a little, say five thousand, and I know she's interested in the cinema.'

'But Miss Denton-Smyth -'

'Oh, I know you'll agree with me. And then you know there's Mr. Macafee. Of course he's difficult. You know, I always say that genius is the converse side of abnormality and of course you can't expect a brilliant man like that to have the common sense and practical knowledge of the world which people say, for instance, that I have, though I'm sure I don't know. And speaking of the company - I suppose you couldn't lend me five shillings just as a loan over the week-end? I did send a post card to Eleanor asking her to call round to-day, but then she has to be down at that firm she works for in the city this evening, and of course she mayn't have time to come in. Young people will be young people.'

So she not only swindled Eleanor as a director, thought Roger. She borrowed from her as a relative. She was a dangerous and tiresome old woman. He braced himself for condemnation; but his sympathies ran counter to his reason. For when he looked at her, he observed her debonair vitality rising above her fatigue and loneliness. Her large romantic eyes gazed at him with adoring trust. It was so obvious that she saw herself as a brave if battered adventurer steering through storms and perils towards a splendid harbour. She was talking now of the great things which the Christian Cinema Company would one day accomplish, of the need in England for an organization to purify public taste. The glory of her theme caught her up like a wind and swept her to the heights of her idealism. Her gallant spirit triumphed above her weary flesh, until Roger saw, acted before his eyes, the drama of the mystic whose strength transcends the limitations of mortality. He could not force himself to break in upon her ecstasy. Also he had a committee meeting ior the Church Bazaar at 6.30 and it would take him quite a quarter of an hour to reach it.

Across the emotional world was woven the net of practical routine. If he was late for the committee, Mrs. Rawlins would bully the wretched secretary, Beattie Laver, into gibbering incompetence, Mrs. Masters would push the Romney girls out of the Sweet Stall, and time would be wasted, nerves shattered and dignity lost over absurd confusions. He must deal with Miss Denton-Smyth another time. Meanwhile he fumbled in a shabby leather case where a pound note lay in wait for such emergencies. If Eleanor came that night she must not be troubled by the old lady's importunity.

So he handed Miss Denton-Smyth his pound note with matter-of-fact indifference as though it were the most natural thing in the world that he should lend her money, and decided to return within a day or two to complete his rescue of Eleanor. Meanwhile he made his excuses to his hostess.

'Well, if you must go, of course you must, but I can't tell you what your coming has meant to me. A light in a dark hour - a wonderful privilege to pray for help and find it. It's this kind of sympathy that makes us know that God is good. I shall never, never forget it. Never, And I won't keep you because I know that you must go. But before you go, won't you say just one prayer? It would be such a help to me. I should always have it, as a sort of memory - blessing this room.'

Mrs. Rawlins, Beattie Laver and the Romney girls must wait. Roger had prayed in too many similar rooms to feel any self-consciousness now as he cleared a little space among the discarded tea-things and knelt beside the table. Caroline got stiffly to her knees, her head pillowed among the broken springs of the armchair. Father Mortimer's quiet voice was music in her ears. It was enchantment. It was wonder. She did not hear the soft tap on the door, nor the faint sound of its opening.

But Roger saw.

'Lighten our darkness,' he prayed, and raising his eyes saw the figure of Eleanor in the doorway. She stood against the darkness of the passage, buttoned up in her trim leather coat, her eyes shining, her cheeks glowing from the cold wind. For one instant she paused there, seeing Roger on his knees, his hands clasped among the egg-cups, and the broken leather of Caroline's upturned shoes. A flicker crossed her face - a faint ripple of amusement, embarrassment and something that might have been contempt. Then the door closed.

'. . . and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night,' Roger repeated. Then he pronounced the blessing and remained for a moment quiet.

When he rose, Caroline lumbered up after him, her joints creaking.

'It's been too wonderful - too lovely,' she cried, her voice trembling, 'the tea, the flowers - your coming, everything. Do you know who you remind me of? Barnabas, the Son of Consolation.'

He bade her good-bye, escaped from her clinging knotted hands, and ran down the stairs. At the front door he paused. He had come just in time to see Eleanor's motor-car disappear round the street corner. He heard the arrogant scream of her syren as she turned into the Richmond Road. Then she was gone.

He stood, his hand unconsciously crumbling the damp plaster of the pillar, his face livid with pain. For he had thought that he had cured himself of his folly and now he knew that the cure was an illusion. He had lashed himself with the whips of his ridicule, but Eleanor's smile lashed him with scorpions. He saw himself as she saw him, a comic curate, praying among the buns. 'Not quite a real man.' Just so; just so. And she had not even troubled to wait to see her cousin. But he had seen, in that swift vision, all that she meant to him. He knew that her scorn could wither the universe. What did he care for his soul's safety or the honour of the Church (which Church in any case?) if she could look like that at him? He needed her respect. Yes, and by God, much more than her respect. He wanted her, loved her, lusted for her. 'Think straight, then, think straight,' he gibed at himself. 'Call things by their proper names. Face up to this, you fool. You are a priest, and to an intelligent modern young agnostic like Eleanor de la Roux a priest is slightly comic, and entirely despicable. If your prayers amuse her, the knowledge of your love would afford her delicious entertainment. This is not the place for heroics. In ten minutes you are due at a meeting of the Church Bazaar Committee, to adjudicate between the rights of Fancywork and Home Produce to hold the place of honour just before the platform. This is the life you have chosen. Down these steps, hurry along the road, catch your bus, stand to allow the fat woman with the parcels to sit down. Pass right along the car, please. One penny fare, please. Now shall I back the Romney girls or Mrs. Masters? Ah, God, God, God. How can a man live in this agony of frustration? That's right. Call upon God. You chose Him as your consoler — the illusion conjured up by generations of chained and frustrated men - the protest of the human soul against the limitations of experience. This is reality, this blinding pain, this shame, this agony — Eleanor de la Roux is reality. And you have chosen - Church bazaars. God. I can't stand this bus - these hideous drivelling stupid people - no - there's no time to walk. Five more minutes now before the committee meeting. That's what? I beg your pardon. My ticket? Oh, Hell - a comic curate never is able to produce his ticket for inspection - ah - here it is. But this isn't tolerable. This is not to be borne.'

He swung himself down from the bus, crossed the pavement, entered a building and took his place at the committee table just as a timid secretary polished her pince-nez and began to read the minutes of the last meeting.

§4

Committee meetings do not drown sorrow, but they can sometimes prevent sorrow from drowning its victims. Roger's pain was not mitigated by the state of his engagement book, but the necessity for constant action strengthened his endurance. He could not think continually of Eleanor when he was rushing from the church to care-committees, from boys' classes to funerals, from baptisms to swimming classes and bazaars. For nearly a month he drove himself forward on a self-imposed routine of work which aroused Father Lasseter to faint protests.

'You need not think you have to bear the whole burden of the shortage of clergymen on your own shoulders, my dear boy.'

'I don't,' laughed Roger. But when he heard of the demand for an assistant at Saint Saviour's, Bermondsey, he told Father Lasseter of his desire to make the transfer.

'Graves is a noted slave-driver.'

'I know. I think that just at the moment I want to be slave-driven.'

'Well-go if you must. These phases pass. I suppose you don't feel like telling me what's wrong.'

'There's nothing wrong that time and a little diversion of interest won't put right.'

'You'll get diversion of interest in Bermondsey. But there's no need to kill yourself.'

'I shan't. I'm extremely fit. Don't I look it?'

'You look as if you were heading for a nervous breakdown.'

'Nonsense, sir. I'm going to make my team win the London Junior Diving Cup. You can't associate that ambition with nervous breakdowns.'

They had both laughed, and Roger left the older man somewhat comforted.

He did not, however, forget the business which had taken him to Lucretia Road. He had gone twice to the offices of the Christian Cinema Company, and after another interview with Caroline and one with Johnson had decided that there was only one chance of salvaging Eleanor's money. If the Tona Perfecta Film was all that Johnson and Macafee claimed, it was just possible that somebody interested in the film business might think it worth financing. Then at least Eleanor would perhaps get her capital back.

It was then that Roger rang up D'Aynecourt. D'Aynecourt had been at college with him and an erratic friendship survived between the two men on the basis of an amiable incompatibility of interests. D'Aynecourt lived in Paris and Chelsea, wrote intellectual film criticism and pursued as a hobby the wholly disinterested amusement of deciphering the more scandalous riddles of film finance. He always knew whose money supported which film and why, and recounted the reasons with sardonic amusement.

To D'Aynecourt's rooms in Cheyne Row Roger went with his tale of the Christian Cinema Company, and in a spirit of malicious benevolence, D'Aynecourt at once produced his Big Financier.

'Simon L. Brooks is the man you ought to see. He's behind God knows how many companies. But, mark you, my friend, he's no philanthropist. If, as you say, there's stuff in this Scottish genius, he'll probably buy him out of your crazy company, which will then be able to die peacefully, which would be, I imagine, its happiest end. If not-' D'Aynecourt shrugged his shoulders.

It appeared that the great man was in England at the moment. It appeared that D'Aynecourt was to meet him.

'I'll see what I can do. Well, well. How are you, when you're not attempting to reform the British Cinema? You look slightly fatigued. Have you gone over to Rome yet? Or are you still satisfied with the guidance of Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Bart., Defender of the Faith?'

'God forbid,' said Roger.

But he went back to the clergy house elated and expectant. It would really be rather exhilarating if he - the comic curate, the not-quite-real-man, could produce the financial god from the machine and save the company. He wanted to show Eleanor that he was not wholly without influence.

But the days passed and he heard no more from D'Aynecourt. Then, suddenly, that casual young man rang up to say that he had seen Brooks, that Brooks was quite amused, and that if he had time he might ring up on Monday night and ask Mortimer to take him down to see Macafee and the film.

Roger had a Boy Scouts' class at half-past eight on Monday evening, but he rang up and found a deputy. He refused to sacrifice the entertainment of escorting Simon L. Brooks out to Macafee's laboratory. Johnson's casual remark, that Miss de la Roux spent most of her spare time down there now, lit in him a faint hope that he might see her also. He did not know if he wanted to see Eleanor, but an entirely human and rather disgraceful sentiment made him anxious that she should see him visiting the laboratory as the escort of Brooks and D'Aynecourt.

'I'll larn her. I'll larn her,' swore he to himself as he fumbled among black clerical coats on the peg in the bleak passage. The wind howled through the bare hall. It was a wild evening.

Roger went out on to the steps and waited for the car which was to convey them all out to Annerley. The wind had torn the clouds to ribbons and scattered the earlier rain. It caught Roger's coat and whipped his face as he stood bare-headed, waiting.

'The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind,' thought Roger. 'Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding! Well, it's a good whirlwind. But will the Lord answer me?'

A great car droned and purred up to the door. Roger went down and saw D'Aynecourt sitting with a large, spectacled personage, so amazingly like Roger's imaginary conception of film magnates that it was all he could do to keep from laughing during D'Aynecourt's laconic introduction in the little lighted saloon of the Rolls Royce. Mr. Simon L. Brooks drove at night with his car lit and its blinds down so that he was enclosed in a small and secret conference chamber like a ship's cabin, spinning through the rapids of the London traffic. He had an appearance of owlish benevolence. The eyes behind his horn-rimmed spectacles were kind rather than keen, and instead of questioning Roger about the company he told ribald tales with inexhaustible fluency and enjoyment. Roger listened half-heartedly, disturbed by the thought of Macafee's perversity, which might easily lead him to choose this evening to keep away from the laboratory. To his immense relief his sight of the battered hoardings screening the Chemical Works from the road was followed by a shaft of light from the uncurtained windows of the laboratory itself.

'It looks as though he were here all right. You'll have to leave the car outside, I'm afraid.' He found himself looking for Eleanor's Clyno, but no other car was there. Simon Brooks's light-grey spats twinkled on the pavement. 'I'm afraid you'll find it muddy inside,' Roger warned him. 'There's a sort of field to cross.'

'Is there?' Simon Brooks looked meditatively through the gap in the hoarding. 'I feel like a bootlegger. Huh? Better take these off, eh?' he asked, indicating his spats.

'If you don't want them ruined,' said Roger gravely, and was thankful that D'Aynecourt's face was in the shadow when the great man leaned against the door of the car and with splendid absence of embarrassment tore off first one spat and then the other, and tossed them on to the seat.

'That's better. Huh? Come along, then. You'd better lead the way, Mr. Mortimer. Expect us when you see us,' he told his chauffeur. 'But if we're not back in about two hours, come to look for my dead body-with a gun.'

The wind was wilder than ever. It rattled and creaked in the crazy hoardings. It buffeted Roger as he pushed his way across the uneven ground, stumbling over broken pottery, and squelching into puddles. The land round the factory reminded him of France in war time, and his old phobia of treading on a decomposing corpse returned to him. Simon L. Brooks swore jovially behind him, and Roger strained his ears through the wind to hear, for though debarred from overt profanity by his cloth, he prided himself that his temperance was not due to poverty of diction, and appreciated opportunities of enriching his potential vocabulary.

But what a wind! Shut up in the Rolls Royce, Roger had failed to appreciate its ferocity, Here it swooped down on him, snatched at his hat and made his scarf a whip for his face. The factory itself seemed in the last stage of dilapidation. The wonder was that those high unsupported walls stood the strain of such assault.

'I don't think I envy Macafee his home to-night,' thought Roger, and turned to encourage the profane but pleasant Mr. Brooks.

Locating Macafee's light from across the field was one matter; finding his door in the darkness was another. Roger groped his way over piles of fallen masonry, and bruised his knuckles against several yards of wall before at last he knocked on what seemed to be a door. At first there was no response, but a gleam of light reassured him. He knocked, and finally kicked to save his knuckles, summoning his gently blaspheming companions. But at last the door opened, and Macafee, more rumpled, dusty and shock-headed than ever, stood before them, blinking through tinted spectacles. Stammering a little, but very conciliatory and polite, Roger introduced Brooks and D'Aynecourt, and followed them into the laboratory. Then, down the long lighted room, he saw the smooth brown head of Eleanor de la Roux, bent over a gas-jet in which she held a bubbling tube.

A stormy gust of emotion shook Roger. Joy, tenderness, dismay and anger broke down his valiant defences of irony and amusement. His benevolent patronage of Macafee was swept away in a gust of jealousy. So this was how she spent her evenings. This was where she came every night after her work at the Business College. This was the new hobby which had supplanted her enthusiasm for the I.L.P. There she sat, serenely indifferent alike to his anguish and to the possibilities of Simon L. Brooks, watching a vivid blue liquid which bubbled in her tube and noting on a slip of paper its reactions.

How was it, thought Roger, that ability to laugh at oneself proved so poor an armour against pain? He could see perfectly well the comic element in his distress. He saw how neatly he had conspired with fate to serve his rival. He had taken all this trouble to impress Eleanor, and had only succeeded in helping the detestable Macafee. Yet his appreciation of the comedy could not ease the torment of his mind.

His experiment, however, was succeeding. Mr. Brooks was accustomed to touchy and difficult young inventors, and apart from his financial ability, he really understood the technical possibilities of the cinema. Macafee discovered at once his capacity, and respected it. It was a relief to him to talk to a man who spoke his own language. He unbent and grew almost eloquent and obliging, explaining diagrams and chemical formulae. When Brooks suggested a brief demonstration, he lifted his voice and called to his temporary assistant.

'Eleanor. Hi, Eleanor!'

Roger started. So it had gone as far as this. He called her Eleanor as though she were his maid, his chattel, his mistress. 'Absurd, absurd,'he told his raging temper. 'They are working together. He is an uncouth mannerless creature. He calls her by the name that comes quickest and easiest to him.'

He watched her adjusting the lights and setting up the apparatus. She was nimble, intelligent and quiet, intent on her job.

'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass,^! thought Roger. But the commandment does not forbid one to covet that which is not yet one's neighbour's. It leaves the way open for free competition,

Eleanor turned down the lights. Roger found himself standing beside D'Aynecourt and Brooks, facing a softly luminous screen, tinted with pale ochre. Macafee's voice spoke from the shadows. 'In order to make a test film I made use of the Western Syndicate's studios in Hertfordshire, and simply took on the Tona Perfecta one of the settings of a talkie, simultaneously with theirs. This is the ordinary Western Syndicate Film.'

Roger had never been to the talkies, and he was astounded by the volume of brazen noise which emerged from the loudspeaker below the quivering screen. He was amused to see that Macafee, with his concentration upon technical problems and his contempt for artistic values, had been lured by an impish providence to choose for his test film a comedy scene of triumphant vulgarity. For the blaring syncopation of the music was followed by a vision of Bathing Beauties, splashing through synthetic shallows towards a rocking, if deceptive, fisherman's cobble. Their squeals of ecstatic discomfort, as they dashed into the cold water, broke like the notes of a high-powered saxophone through the orchestral accompaniment; but the music slowly died away to allow the dialogue to sound above the soft whirring of the apparatus.

'You will notice that there is no sense of inevitability about the relationship between the sound and the picture,' said Macafee. 'The speech might perfectly well not be speech by the people you see on the screen.'

The Scotchman was quite sure of himself here, thought Roger, and not at all ridiculous. Supposing that he had really done a good piece of work, was not Eleanor justified in admiring him? Was she not right to place herself on the side of technical progress? Was it not just in this control by man over his material environment that the triumph of the twentieth century lay? And was she not a woman of her age?

'She wants to master one kind of technical achievement,* Roger told himself, 'and to force herself into the competitive business world. She believes in power, money and efficiency. She believes that women and Socialists both suffer from lack of these things. They enjoy being victims instead of masters. and she disapproves of the enjoyment.'

The film danced and cackled in front of him. Suddenly Macafee switched it off and turned on the lights.

'I'm going to put on the Tona Perfecta. I shall use the same sound producers. I want you to notice the difference in synchronization,'

'Quite,' said Mr. Brooks. 'I get you. May we smoke?'

Eleanor came quietly forward with a saucer for an ashtray, returning immediately to her place beside the instrument. Mr. Brooks watched her quiet movements.

'That's a smart girl you've got.'

'She will be when I've done with her. I've only had her a month and that for half-time. She's all right.'

From Macafee that was glowing praise, but Roger loathed the possessive patronage of his voice.

The lights went down again, and Roger found himself watching the same girls splashing and screeching through the same water. But this time, it was true, there was a difference. The photography was clearer and softer, The sunlight on the water gave an astonishing impression of vivacity. The sounds came with perfect accuracy as part of the picture. It seemed as though the girls really uttered their futile words, and the water really splashed about their feet.

'This is good work,' he thought, 'The man's clever., damn him; the man's clever.' He contrasted Macafee's mastery of his technique with his own halting incompetence as a preacher, and the sick weight of depression settled upon his body till it became an aching physical discomfort.

But the demonstration ended, the lights went up, and Macafee talked again to the great man, while D'Aynecourt, supercilious and amused, wandered about the laboratory. Roger found Eleanor at his side. Her smooth hair was a little rumpled, and a smudge of oil had found its way on to her hot cheek.

'What do you think? Do you think it's good? Do you think he'll do anything?'

'I don't know. I'm no expert in these things. I don't know how good the Western Syndicate Film is supposed to be. Macafee's is certainly better. Do you want Brooks to like it?'

'Frightfully,' said Eleanor. 'When I talked to you the other day, in that restaurant at Earl's Court, you remember, alter we met here for the first time, I told you I didn't much care. But since I came to work here, I feel enormously interested in the whole business and the Tona Perfecta's nothing to the new colour film we're making.'

She was a new creature, Roger thought. The self-interested Macafee had given her something that he, Roger, for all his love and anguish and solicitude, could never give.

'I believe that this is the thing I've been wanting,' she continued. 'Of course, I want to go in on the business, not the technical side of the film industry, but I must know something about processes first. I've got schemes for wholesale manufacture of our improvement of the Van Dorn Kelley Pryzma films at astonishingly low rates. I do wish I'd learned more about optics. Oh- look - there's Hugh got on to his colour work. I do believe, I do believe your Mr. Brooks is interested. You know, the colour film is going to be the thing. It is indeed. I wish it were ready to show. How long is Brooks staying in England?⁵

'For another ten days, I think.'

'Oh, he must. Wouldn't it be gorgeous, gorgeous, if he really took up Hugh and gave him a free hand, and I got in sideways somehow? Wouldn't it be great?'

Roger looked down at her flushed happy face. He could not do less than wish that her own wishes might be fulfilled.

'Yes,' he said, trying to believe he meant it. 'It would be great.'

§5

Eleanor was right. Brooks was far more impressed by the possibilities of the colour film than by the Tona Perfecta, and Roger gradually realized that the outcome of this visit might be very different from his intention. Brooks might refuse to take any interest in the Tona Perfecta, and the Christian Cinema Company would still be left with that doubtful and unrealizable asset; but he might very easily make some sort of offer for the uncompleted colour film. He might persuade Macafee to return to California with him, and Eleanor, who was clearly doing her best to persuade the great man to accept her as an indispensable part of Macafee's equipment, might be snatched away by Brooks to another continent.

'The best thing that can happen, of course,' Roger told himself. But his heart and his nerves refused to respond to the dictation of his reason. He stood just outside the group, feeling ridiculously alien and unwanted. Nobody seemed to remember that it was due to his initiative that Brooks had ever heard of Macafee.

But at last D'Aynecourt and Brooks began to move.

It was arranged that Macafee should give Brooks a chance to see the colour film directly it was ready for demonstration.

'Can we give you a lift, Miss . . . er . . .?' murmured D'Aynecourt dutifully. He really disliked young women of Eleanor's type, who became so much interested in light-refractions and complementary colour-values that they forgot the obligation of their sex to charm. 'Chemistry is an unwholesome pursuit for a woman,' he murmured to Roger.

'I've got to stay and help clear up and do one or two odd chores, thanks,' said Eleanor. 'I'm all right. I always get myself home.'

'May we have the pleasure of your company again, sir?' Brooks asked Roger.

'Thanks. I'm seeing Miss de la Roux home.' Yes, by God, Roger told himself. Nobody shall deprive me of that half-hour's sweet torment.

The storm seemed fiercer than ever when Brooks and D'Aynecourt left the laboratory. While Roger waited for Macafee and Eleanor to put away the apparatus, he heard the wind whistling round the room. Once or twice there was a splintering clatter as slates fell, or as the broken fragments of glass still left in the gaping windows of the main building rattled down. He felt angry and depressed, resenting their indifference to his presence.

But Eleanor was ready at last, buttoning herself into her tweed overcoat.

'You've got a smudge on your nose,' observed Macafee.

'Thanks, Where? Here?'

'No. Here.' He took her handkerchief from her and rubbed her face with the rough familiarity of a brother.

'Damn him. Damn him. Well, in any case, I've got her now. For half an hour,' reflected Roger.

'Are you ready. Miss de la Roux?' he said aloud.

It took all his strength to push the door open. The wind howling through the factory slammed it behind them, and they stood in the darkness of the ruin. Blinking until he grew accustomed to this plunge from vivid light, Roger saw the jagged angles of masonry reared against the sky. Tattered wisps of cloud-like shreds of smoke blew across the stars. The crazy flapping of an old poster, partly torn away from the brickwork, made the wind visible. The whole bare building groaned and whined in travail. Slates clattered down. Gusts shook the straining walls. Right over the laboratory behind them swung the black menace of the tallest wall. Five stories high, with the supporting floors removed, it overhung the squat solidity of the one habitable room.

Dragging Eleanor away from this wall Roger turned and faced it. Even now it seemed to totter in the wind that blew its towering mass towards the laboratory.

'That doesn't look very safe,' he shouted. 'I think if you'll go out to the road, I'll speak to Macafee.'

He started back towards the laboratory. The wind buffeted the high wall in front of him, each successive gust striking on it like waves over a ship. It seemed probable to Roger that at any moment the whole mass might go down, crashing through the laboratory roof, on top of Macafee and all his cameras, perforators, projectors and loud-speakers.

The door stuck. Roger tugged at it desperately, but when he opened it he saw the young Scotsman standing in front of a large chest, rolling up papers covered with coloured diagrams.

'Hullo. You back?' remarked Macafee quite genially. 'Come and look at these - you didn't see them, did you? These are my improvements on the Pryzma film. Now, you see, in Van Dorn Kelley's work the negative film consists of successive pairs of identical images. ..."

'Look here, Macafee,' gasped Roger, 'I think you'll have to get out of here. That old wall seems a bit shaky.'

'Oh, that's been shaky for a long time. You see, what I've done is to replace the "flash" exposure of the positive film'

'Yes, but you'd better just come and have a look.' Roger was acutely conscious of their danger. The laboratory gaped in front of him like a huge white trap. He felt the egg-shell fragility of the roof and the merciless mass of brickwork overhanging it. 'The wind's terrific.'

Accumulating exasperation maddened him. He saw himself shut into that trap with Macafee. He saw the inevitable buckling in of the laths, the crumbling avalanche of plaster, the final overwhelming ruin. So vivid was his consciousness of their danger that he involuntarily ducked his head. Yet he knew that while Macafee stood there, he could not save himself.

'Damn you, man,' he cried suddenly. 'Don't be a blasted fool. Do you want to be killed?'

Macafee looked up at him with supercilious amusement.

'Tut-tut-tut and you a clergyman. You'd better run away if you're frightened.'

But at that moment the driving hurricane detached an already-loosened brick from the masonry above. It crashed through the laboratory roof, falling on to the sink where recently Eleanor had been working.

'You see —' cried Roger, so anxious to prove his point to Macafee that he would almost have welcomed a complete catastrophe, if only the inventor would acknowledge himself in the wrong.

'Eh, well,' said Macafee, and maddeningly cool strolled across the room. They could hardly push the door open between them, but once it was open, it stuck against some obstruction outside, and through the open doorway, Eleanor was blown into the room.

'Hullo,' she cried. 'Are you two coming out? I really don't think it's safe in here, Hugh.'

'Go away. Get out of here at once, please,' cried Roger, beside himself with anxiety for her and fear and anger.

But Hugh calmly pushed his way through the door, looked at the threatening wall, and returned shrugging his shoulders.

'I'm afraid it does look a bit groggy. I know what we shall have to do. We'd better take out that chest with the reels and diagrams. We three ought to be able to move it.'

'Oh, but you can't.' Roger was about to protest, but Eleanor was already tugging at the bulky wooden cupboard into which Macafee had been thrusting his papers and specimen reels.

It was monstrous. It was inhuman. It was a nightmare of wanton horror, that Macafee should let her run that risk, when at any minute the wall might fall in on her.

The sweat started on Roger's forehead; he hurled himself at the cupboard, meaning at first to seize Eleanor in his arms and carry her off out of danger; but he realized that this was impossible. She would struggle and fight, and in the end more time would be wasted. He could do nothing but snatch at one corner of the cupboard and take his share in, pushing the heavy thing towards the door.

Every second seemed like an hour. The chest stuck against the corner of a sink. Macafee, smaller and less muscular than Roger, stumbled once, and once caught his leg between the cupboard and a fixed table. They knocked over a tripod, and the crash made Roger start so violently that he almost let go his hold. He was conscious of Eleanor, pushing and tugging like a small pony, completely unafraid.

The more they pushed, the farther the door seemed to recede from them. Roger found himself starting to pray instinctively that they might reach the door — only the door - alive. But his disdain for instinctive prayers of panic checked him. He would not, even for Eleanor's sake, fall into that abasement of spirit. He bent down and caught the weight of the cupboard more securely in his straining arms and stepped forward. With almost the entire burden of it leaning against his chest, he lifted the thing across the threshold and they went through.

They had still to cross the dark uneven floor of the factory, to stumble over fallen masonry, old wheels and bricks, but once outside the laboratory itself, the nightmare ended. On the waste land beyond the factory walls, they set their burden down in the mud and stretched their aching arms.

'Now which next?' asked Eleanor. 'Hadn't we better get the cameras?'

'You're not going back,' Roger stated.

'Why not? Come on, while the lull lasts. We'll all go and grab something,' she answered, darting off towards the building.

'Stop! Eleanor! Eleanor' Stop,' cried Roger, stumbling after her through the darkness and calling frantically as he ran. There is in the act of calling a sort of desperate pathos, which in itself augments desire. In his childhood, lying alone at night, Roger had sometimes started, out of a cold-blooded devilry, to summon his nurse or mother up to the nursery. But as he called the sound of his own voice, impotent and wild in the darkness, filled him with panic, until he was driven to real hysteria by the fears he feigned. So now, calling for Eleanor through the black wind, he found himself stricken by agonized and childish terror. The broken walls crouched like monsters waiting to pounce upon her. The wind buffeted him; a pile of rubbish tripped him and drove him on to his knees, scraping his skin through his thin clerical trousers.

'Eleanor! Eleanor!'

This was the nightmare of his childhood. He wanted to wake up and find himself in the lighted streets, with Eleanor safe beside him.

'Eleanor! Eleanor!'

He was near the laboratory wall again, groping his way along the wall. He found her tugging impatiently at the door. But the displacement of the -wall had already pinned it. It would not open, though she set her foot against a fallen brick and pulled valiantly.

Eleanor. Come away. Come away, you little fool.'

He tried to wrench her hands from the knob, and she, furious at his interference, turned round on him.

'Let go. Damn you - let go.'

Then, when he seized her by the arms and with a quick schoolboy trick snatched her away, she shouted, 'Get away -even if you're afraid for yourself. Let Hugh and me get in.'

But at that moment there was a new sound above the creaking of the brickwork and howling of the wind. Like the crack of a whip, the dry mortar let go its hold, and for a moment it seemed as though all the darkness before them stirred and shifted. It was such an extraordinary sight that Eleanor stood gaping, watching the black night move in front of her eyes. Then with an unexpected blow, Roger sprang on her and pushed her roughly to the ground, himself spread-eagled on top of her, sheltering her struggling, kicking body below his own, as with a thunderous roar, the wall went down in front of them.

It had, of course, fallen away from them on top of the laboratory, but a few odd bricks dropped into the factory, one hitting Roger on the ankle. They lay quite still, their mouths full of dust. The roaring seemed to continue for about half an hour, though really it only lasted a few seconds. It was followed by a complete and terrifying silence.

Then, very cautiously, Roger began to move. Eleanor, surprised and indignant, still squirmed with reassuring vigour underneath him. The dust was settling, and the wind, as though thankful to rest for a minute after its unprecedented triumph, held its breath.

'Are you all right? Did I hurt you? I do apologize,' cried Roger, helping Eleanor to her feet.

'My mouth's full. I know now what it is to bite the dust,' coughed Eleanor. 'I suppose it was the only thing to do. Oh, poor Hugh! Do you think it's smashed everything?'

As the dust settled, another and much lower profile of wall was arranging itself against the clear star-spangled sky. Roger looked round, coughing and blinking,

'We must get out of here. Before anything else - ugh!' For he stepped on to the ankle that the brick had hit, and found it gave way beneath his weight. He would have fallen if Eleanor had not seized his arm.

'What's the matter?'

'I think something hit my foot I'm quite all right, You go on. I'll follow.'

'Nonsense. We'll go together. Lean on me." Anything seemed better than remaining in that place; he limped forward, leaning on her arm. They found Macafee staring ruefully at the ruin.

'I'm terribly sorry. The wall's gone,' said Eleanor. 'Oh, Hugh, you mustn't go back there. It's no use. You can't see anything in this darkness, and you can't save anything if you could. And it's not safe.'

It certainly was not safe, and though they all felt rather stupid standing there in the wind, there was clearly nothing else to do.

'Well, what do we do next'³ asked Eleanor.

Roger pulled out his watch, but it was too dark to see and he had no matches.

'Well, we'd better get out of here, anyway. I suppose the next thing to do is to tell die police,"

'Police?'

'Well, isn't that what you do when a building falls in?'

He started hobbling towards the street. The pain in his foot had subsided, so that when he stepped on it he could feel nothing but a dull pain from the knee downwards. Macafee and Eleanor walked one on each side of him.

It was curious to come out into the placid normality of the lighted street. What with the noise of the wind, and the

isolation of the old chemical works, nobody in Annerley appeared to have noticed that the gale had blown down a whole huge factory wall. All that noisy tumult and drama had not disturbed a single citizen.

Under a street lamp, Eleanor, Hugh and Roger looked at each other. All three were covered with mud, and brown as gypsies with brick dust, from which their red-rimmed eyes blinked foolishly.

Roger found himself suddenly obliged to sit down on the pavement with his back against the lamp-post. His ankle had begun to hurt intolerably, yet he felt elated rather than distressed.

It was at this moment that two policemen, rolling along with the majestic dignity of their profession, came upon the trio.

'Hullo. Hullo! What's this? What's this?' they asked.

Roger, remembering the responsibility of his cloth, sat up and tried to brush some of the dust out of his eyes, but he was covered with mud, he had lost his hat, and his clerical collar, having come unfastened, stood upright behind one ear.

'Ah, a very opportune arrival, sergeant,' he began in his formal Oxfordish voice. 'We were about to seek your aid. There has been a slight accident.'

Then, suddenly, Eleanor saw the absurdity of his pompous manner, and began to laugh, and Roger, though he had not felt amused until that moment, burst out laughing too, and rocked helplessly against the lamp-post.

'Come, come,' said the policeman, turning to Macafee as the one apparently sober member of the trio. 'We can't have this here, sir. You'd better tell me what's happened.'

'He's not drunk,' the Scotsman declared gruffly, 'he's hurt his foot. There's been an accident. The wind's blown in my factory wall. We were coming to report it.'

Macafee's sobriety was more convincing than Roger's laughter, but the policemen were still a little incredulous until Eleanor and Macafee escorted the fatter one through the gap in the hoarding and showed him the ragged outline of the factory. After that final gust, the wind was quieter. In the street they hardly noticed it. Convinced at last, the policemen became helpful and almost animated. They took down pages of particulars from Macafee, and offered to look at Roger's crushed foot. At first he was reluctant, feeling shy in front of Eleanor, but when she brushed aside his scruples as nonsense, and herself got down on her knees to remove his boot, he at once preferred the attentions of the police, and in order to get rid of Eleanor, suggested that she and Hugh should go in search of a taxi.

The policemen, glad of a little distraction from their dull night promenade, and anxious to display their skill in first aid, inspected Roger's foot, and pronounced it to be nastily bruised,

'In fact, I shouldn't wonder if there isn't a bit of something broken here,' said one of them, sending little jets of pain up Roger's leg.

'No, I shouldn't wonder, either,' agreed Roger amiably. 'Well, we'd all better go home.'

But by the time Eleanor returned with a taxi he had been able to picture the housekeeper's dismay at finding an invalid on her hands in the Clergy House, and consented readily enough to be taken to the local hospital. He wanted Eleanor to go back to her club, but she declared herself to be wide awake. So in the end it was agreed that Macafee with one policeman should go to report upon the damaged factory, while the other escorted Roger and Eleanor to the hospital.

'Of course, it's perfectly absurd, going to hospital for a bruised ankle,' argued Roger in the taxi, 'but if one's going to be a nuisance at all, I suppose one is better there. In any case, a hospital seems the proper and artistic conclusion to such an evening.'

'What an evening!' Eleanor said. Roger could imagine to himself in the darkness how her eyes shone, and how her cheeks were bright with excitement. 'Oh, what an evening! But poor Hugh! I can't bear to think of all his lovely cameras and projectors smashed.'

'Well, we did save the films,' Roger consoled her.

They drifted into silence, as the taxi bumped and rattled down the gusty streets. At the main entrance of the hospital the policeman left them to go in search of the night-porter.

Roger, a little beyond himself with pain and shock and excitement, turned to Eleanor. Suddenly it seemed to him as though all the evening's events fell into their proper place. He felt tremendously confident and happy.

'I want to apologize for the way I behaved in the factory. I was grossly rude. But I was frightened for you,' he began in a polite conversational voice.

'It was perfectly all right - rather funny really. I suppose you saved my life. I'm very grateful.'

'You needn't be. You know, of course, I love you.'

'You what?'

'I love you. I don't want to bother you about it, but it may explain a little why I was so savage when I was afraid you might be killed.'

'Oh,' said Eleanor very softly. 'Oh.'

'I had not really meant to tell you,' he continued with conversational equanimity. 'But it occurred to me that no other explanation of my conduct was rational, and really there is no reason why you should not know. I mean, you see, loving a person puts one under a definite obligation to them. I have got so much happiness from simply knowing that you are in the world, that I naturally should be glad to have any chance of repaying it. Of course, I realize that this can mean nothing to you,' he went on, arguing with a sort of fierce good humour. 'But sometimes it might be convenient to know that there is somebody in the world who would give all he possesses for the chance of serving you. I'm not suggesting that there is anything I can do. But just in case.'

'Oh - er - thank you,' she said flatly.

'It's very good of you to bother with me. Now I promise not to refer again to this unless you choose. And now ought you really to be waiting here? You must be frightfully tired?'

'Oh, I'm perfectly all right. I wouldn't have missed it all for anything - the wind, I mean. But I see our friend the policeman coming back with a whole retinue of stretcher-bearers and whatnots.'

'Good. Excellent. Oh, by the way, if you happen to be seeing Miss Denton-Smyth within a day or two, would you be so awfully good as to tell her why I can't go round to-morrow? I think she was expecting me,'

'But, of course, she'll have to hear about all this. She'll probably come rushing round to see whether you're still alive. She thinks the world of you, you know. Poor Caroline!'

Chapter 6 : Clifton Roderick Johnson

§1

earlier that same evening Clifton Roderick Johnson, proprietor, manager, secretary, tutor and director-of-studies to the Anglo-American School of Scenario Writing, led his four pupils to the window of his Essex Street Office and bade them contemplate the view to their left.

'There,' he boomed, thrusting his vast head and shoulders through the window and gesticulating towards Essex Stairs. 'There's a bit of old London. That's Romance. That's Beauty.' He withdrew his body and one by one the clerk from Islington, the maiden lady from a Bayswater boarding-house, the retired jeweller from Streatham and the young woman from Barnes, who wanted to be like Pola Negri, strained their necks to look upon Romance and Beauty, then followed him back to their table. This was the Tutorial Glass in Scenario Suggestion, Course II, a class which Mr. Johnson gave his pupils to understand was the most subtly advanced and select of all his classes, a class at which He Himself presided, and to which only his most promising pupils were admitted The Chosen Four, who sat gaping at the deal table covered with apple-green casement cloth and ink splashes, thought that they were the star students chosen from a clientèle of some hundreds, who in a larger, ruder, less eclectic hall heard words of wisdom from Mr. Johnson's Staff. They did not know, and indeed it is only fair to add that at the moment Mr, Johnson hardly remembered, that they were the sole pupils whose fees of six guineas, cash in advance, had been paid into the school account. They did not know, and indeed Mr. Johnson hardly knew, that their lecturer who spoke so confidently of technique, cuts, drama and royalties had himself been able to sell for performance only one scenario and a set of captions.

Johnson was certainly feeling good that evening. Ideas flooded his mind so fast that they almost choked him, and the four pupils had no sense that they were being defrauded of their money's worth.

'Write down in your note-books, and engrave upon your memories,' roared Johnson, 'that you should never waste a good view. Every view looks picturesque from some angle. The dullest life gives scope for spot-lights somewhere. Bearing that in mind, let's turn to the Home Exercise. Got that view of the Essex Stairs in your heads? Right. Fire away. Design five different scenes suitable for

(a) Silent films

(A) Talking films

(c) Colour - talking films against the background of the Essex Stairs - making use of

The movement up and down the stairs

The teashop door half-way up the stairs

The view of the Embankment from the stairs

The busy life of Essex Street at the top. Think of Essex Street - movement - traffic - City life - street musicians— proximity to Fleet Street — Press — Strand — Law Courts —Temple - Business Offices. Then think of the Embankment — River - Romance — Roaming - London the biggest Port in the World — Gateway to the unknown — New London - Old London. Now think of different moods for a scenario.

Comedy - light - spring - love - pathos - human - sentiment. An April shower - primroses or violets sold on the pavement - a girl runs to shelter under Essex arch. The young man shelters too.

Farce - a chase - fat Jew hawker - absconding up and down the steps - cars parked by embankment gardens - motor-cycle - try to ride cycle down the stairs - fat woman at bottom selling toy ducks.

Tragedy - hero leaving the Law Courts - disgraced alone - all lost - river suggests flight - suicide - peace - between the indifferent hustle of the Strand an' the eternal peace of the river -

That no lives live for peace That dead men rise up never — er — er That even the weariest river winds somewhere home — down? home to the sea.

Look it up. Look it up. Always verify your quotations -Remember that a little verse goes a long way in sentimental comedy, drama, or tragedy - Keep it outa crook stuff an' farce.

(d) Historic - that's the fourth - look up history costume stuff.' What would happen on Essex Stairs? You gotta find out how old the Stairs are - what happened there. An' what could have happened there. Remember that film history deals with possibilities rather than facts. Local colour — time colour. Keep it vivid. Pep it up with a bit o' farce. Love story an' so on. Keep your love stories light, without any sex in them. I'm gonna talk straight. You're not kids, nor'm I. Man to man. The public wants good strong human interest, but it doesn't need Sex. Give clean humour. Don't mind riskin' a tear or two. What do we take the Missus to the Movies for but to give her a good cry, eh? But keep it strong an' keep it simple. Now send me in those synopses before next Friday; write on one side of the paper only an' don't forget a penny-halfpenny stamp. That's all.' He dismissed the class with much hand-shaking and salutation. 'Well - good night - So-long - Cheerio. Good night, Mr. Simpson. 'Night, Miss Brodie. 'Night, Miss Elloway. 'Night, Mr. Loram. Good night.'

The pupils snapped up their dispatch-cases. They fumbled for their umbrellas, and off they went, clattering down the steep stone steps, chattering: 'Well, wasn't he good this evening?' 'Mustn't it be marvellous to have all those ideas?' Even Loram, the jeweller, with masculine restraint, conceded, 'Brilliant fellow. Very. Expect we shall hear more of him one day.' Whatever else Johnson might do for his pupils, he certainly gave them a sense of vitality. His enormous physical gusto invigorated them. He made them feel that life was full of exciting possibilities; he made them feel that they were in close contact with a cultured mind.

In his search for culture and beauty, Johnson had acquired almost every kind of outline and selection that modern publishers' advertisements could recommend. On his shelves were Outlines of History, Science, Philosophy and Religion; Literature was served up to him in the Hundred Most Famous Stories of the World, in the Thirty-Seven Forms of the Plot, and the Dictionary of Literary Characters. He knew the characteristics of Mr. Micawber and Paul Dombey without having read a word of Dickens. He could adorn his tales with classical allusions and paint his morals from great fiction of the Continent. All modern labour-saving devices for recognizing allusions to Cervantes, Bellerophon, Cicero and Ella Wheeler Wilcox lay at his elbow, and if in the course of his headlong gallops through history, science, literature and religion, he sometimes misplaced an island, or swept an artist or composer into the wrong century. who among his audience was to question him? And, if challenged, had he not his perfect justification?

'Dates?' said Johnson. 'What are dates? An arbitrary division of time invented for the convenience of unimaginative men. 'Smy belief that in the future you'll never stop to bother about the date of this A.D. or that B.C. If you want facts an' dates, hop along the Strand to Somerset House, You'll get 'em there. You'll get nothing else. Dead stuff, I say. Dead stuff. I give you living knowledge. I give you Beauty — The Eternal Quest. The Eternal Question. I give you the key to the Universe. Culture —'

His breast expanded to the thought, of culture and his eyes glowed. He soared high on the wind of his own words. His borrowed Americanisms infected him with a Great Glad sense of Pep and Progress. He forgot the unfortunate slump in Bolivian Minerals, the return of his latest scenario from his agent, with a brief note to say that he had exhausted all possible markets, the gnawing worry of accumulating debts, and the thought that Mollie was going to have another child.

It was so like Mollie to hang always a little behind his evolution. When he met her he was floundering splendidly in the shallows of a Back to Nature Phase He had been working on a pioneer film of the 'Covered Wagon' type, and saw himself as the strong virile man in the sheepskin coat, accompanied by his broad-hipped, broad-bosomed woman, mother of many children. Mollie had indeed followed him with daring confidence to the experimental pioneer life in a two-roomed flatlet at Haverstock Hill and their first child arrived with flattering promptitude. Johnson invented quite fascinating theories about child psychology and infant education. But after cluttering the living room with coloured cubes and squares, intended to teach the small thing how to appreciate tone and form values, he retreated to the office in Essex Street, and finally rented the flat in Battersea. For the Haverstock Hill establishment cramped not only his educational system, which required a background of great open spaces, but also his style of thinking, since a creative artist cannot afford broken nights with a wailing child, and days wasted in nursery disorder.

It was just then that he met Delia and began to create for her a scenario of London and Paris night life, with a background of cocktail parties and orchids and fashion shows and the Croydon Aerodrome.

Delia complicated everything, for Mollie grew less and less like his ideal Soul Mate the more she fulfilled the role he had designed for her, Johnson began to realize the difference between the economic situation of the pioneer patriarch, enriched increasingly by each addition to his family, and the city father, whose more numerous offspring simply result in larger bills. Moreover, Delia was extravagant. The best alone was good enough for her. Johnson began to feel a little tired of her. His imagination was already turning towards a new enchantment and the thought of a long epic poem embodying the Dream Woman of the centuries.

For he had met another woman, the perfect fulfilment of all his ideals in one. Strong as a pioneer, sophisticated as a cocktail, majestic, confident, splendid and conquering, Gloria St. Denis.

Because he was feeling good after the lecture, warmed with the heady wine of his own eloquence, Johnson let his thoughts dwell upon her — her slow indifferent smile, the rich curving lines of her body, her fund of admirably chosen anecdotes. He was thinking of her when he heard a knock on the door.

He glanced up, suddenly a little pale, for behind his rapturous dreams lurked the smothered subconscious worry of his financial difficulties. There were so many visitors whom it might be inconvenient to receive.

He sat for a moment, wondering if the caller would go away if he kept quite still and pretended that he had left the office.

But the Knock came again, and the voice of Mrs. Franley, the office cleaner, shouted: 'Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson!'

'Oh, come in, Mrs. Franley,' he cried, relieved. 'I've been taking a class and I'm a bit late.'

'There's a young lady to see you, Mr. Johnson. I told her it was past your hours, but she said she saw your light in the window and knew you was still here, and she won't go away.'

"The devil she won't!' thought Johnson. 'Who is it?' he asked. 'Anyone you know?'

'Not that I know of. Not one of your regulars.'

'Oh, all right, all right; ii you're going down you might ask her to come up. It's probably someone come to join the school.'

But within himself he thought that it was more likely to be Delia. They had had a tiff two nights ago at Pinaldi's. He had ordered the three-shilling table d'hote in an unwonted panic of economy, and she, with angry hauteur, had messed up the hors d'æuvres with her fork and declared she never saw such muck in her life. What did he take her for? A servant girl on her night cut? What did he think she wanted to eat: Herring bones in oil and some vegetables saved from other people's plate-sweepings? And up she got, and into her fur coat she wriggled, and out of the building she flounced, the little devil! Johnson had been left to pay, without rancour, the bill for her uneaten dinner. It would be just like her, he though:, if she came again to-night, and nestled up to him and begged him to take her to that nice, nice restaurant where the hors d'æuvres were made of herring bones and all the waiters had flat feet. Well, well, he would take her if she asked him, for in a melting kittenish mood she was delicious.

But the girl who came nervously through the open door was neither the petted Delia nor the splendid Gloria. She glanced with scared, red-rimmed eyes through her pince-nez, and clutched a shabby dispatch-case as though it contained the secret of the universe. She was like the thousands of girls whom Johnson saw swinging daily down to City offices on trams and buses, narrow-chested, drooping, creatures with mud-splashed stockings, unbecoming brown felt hats and deplorable coats trimmed with worn fur. She looked at Johnson as though she thought that he might swallow her.

'Mr. - Mr. Johnson?'

'At your service.' He bowed, with his theatrical exaggeration. 'And what is there that I can do for you?'

'You won't know my face,' she stammered. 'But you will know my name. It's Miss Weller. Doreen Weller.'

A faint recollection of some slight discomfort stirred at the back of his mind.

'I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Weller. This isn't the time I generally see clients, you know, but I stayed a little late after a special tutorial class, and as you are here, you might as well tell me what I can do for you. Sit down, won't you?'

She sat, drooping and unattractive, while he tried to remember which of the stupid girls who wrote to the school from time to time she might be.

'Mr. Johnson,' she said at last, with a sort of desperate rush. 'Why don't you answer my letters?⁵

'Ah, letters! letters! There, my dear young lady, you unhappily hit upon one of my congenital failings. I can't answer letters. I mean to. I mean to. I compose in my head wonderful phrases to dictate to my secretary. And they just fade away. They fade away.'

'Yes, yes,' she interrupted. 'But what about my novel? What's happened to my novel?' And without warning Miss Weller dropped her face in her hands and began to cry.

He stared at her with increasing disgust, but his voice was bracing and avuncular.

'Now, now, you're tired, I expect. What's gone wrong, eh? Oh, you city girls! You city girls. It's a sin - forcing the sweet flower of girlhood to fade in the dark offices. Distorting the natural function of womanhood. Now, try to pull yourself together and tell me what's the trouble.'

Who the devil was she? What the devil was she?

Miss Weller removed her pince-nez and dabbed her streaming eyes. Johnson rose from his chair by the desk and began to walk the room with a lecturer's strides, giving her time to recover her composure.

'We call it progress, ye gods: we call it progress. We force our women to do things they were never meant to do. We wrench ^!em away from their sacred tasks. We waste their lives. We waste their lives. And we call it progress!'

'But, Mr. Johnson,' gulped the girl, past all concern for the welfare of her sex. 'I must know about my novel.'

'Well, now, Miss Weller, I confess I don't at the moment recall exactly what it is about this novel.'

He had to go carefully, for the girl might have a real grievance. She might even, disquieting thought, have a legal case.

It happened that Johnson was not only the director of the Anglo-American School of Scenario Writing. He was also proprietor of the Metropolitan and Professional Correspondence School of Journalism. This school had been for a time a lucrative little venture. Johnson ran it with the aid of a man called Osborne, a broken-down journalist, a clever man but irresponsible and an intermittent and furious drinker. The correspondence school conducted its beneficent operations along the simplest lines. Johnson inserted from time to time in various papers his characteristically ingenious advertisements. 'Every Man, Woman or Child can sell at least One Story, if they know how.' 'There would never have been a Mute Inglorious Milton if he had known the Metropolitan and Professional.' 'You can make people laugh and cry and make them pay you for it.' 'Manuscripts read free.' And so on. In response to these advertisements from Bath and Huddersfield, Peebles and Penzance, came poems, short stories, essays, plays and scenarios. To each correspondent Johnson dispatched, after a suitable interval, his standardized reply. The work submitted, he declared, was hardly marketable, but it showed undoubted promise.

The one thing needed to enable the writer to produce saleable stuff was an intensive study of his little volume, 'How to make threepence into three thousand pounds,' to be obtained from the school at the trifling price of six and six, post free. As a matter of fact, the school had been designed largely as a convenient way of turning to profit the 1,786 remainder copies of his book which Johnson had been forced under his contract with his publisher to purchase. All manuscripts sent to the school were passed on at the rate of 2s. 6d. a manuscript to Mr. Osborne who, in his capacity as Director of Studies, glanced through the MSS. and scribbled half-legible remarks along their margins. But Osborne went off one day, as he always went sooner or later, with the Lord alone knew how many MSS. in his trunk; since that time Johnson had been too much preoccupied with his urgent private affairs to do more than cash the cheques and send off the books, and toss the MSS. as they arrived into a big tin box at the Battersea flat, to be handled by Osborne's successor, whoever he might be.

Among these papers, or among the papers irretrievably lost when Osborne decamped, it appeared probable that Miss Doreen Weller's novel lay.

The situation was awkward, but not irremediable.

'You told me that if I sent you £25,' Miss Weller sobbed, 'you would make it fit for publication. That was seven months ago. I've written and written. Why don't you answer my letters? What's happened to my novel? Don't the publishers like it? Have you tried them all? Where have you sent it? Oh God!' She was working herself up to a fit of hysteria. 'It's awful,' she gulped. 'It's been awful waiting every day for the post. Listening for the flutter of letters into the box. And then never a line. Day after day. I've got to have my royalties. I've got to. Or you must give me my money back.'

'But, my dear child, you can't do things like that.'

'But you must, or I shall go to prison. I took that money. You don't understand. I took that money. It was the petty cash for the month. I thought you said . . .'

'Oh, now. now, now. You don't mean that. You don't mean that.' Good Lord! The little fool! If this were true, and hysterical girls of her type could do anything, then there would be a police-court case, with inquiries about the Metropolitan School, and his revision service, and his method of handling manuscripts. And that was not at all what he desired. His patronage turned to paternal asperity, until his questioning extracted sentence by sentence the girl's story. She was plain. She was lonely. She was misunderstood. Nobody loved her. Her sisters married right under her very nose. Her brothers laughed at her. And all the rime, she knew that she was talented.

'I know here!' she cried, striking with an ink-stained hand the flat breast under her brown coat-frock. 'I know here! I wrote poetry. I wrote plays. But nobody would look at them. Then I saw your advertisement. You said, do you remember? "You can make the world laugh and cry. You can pluck a leaf from Balzac's laurels. You!" She did not know much about Balzac, but she starved for laurels. She saw herself rewarded, rich, acclaimed, talking eloquently at the PEN Club, dressed in night-blue velvet and pearls, a famous novelist. She saw; 'The Book of the Year - Destinies, by Doreen Weller.' And her picture in the paper, without her pince-nez, and her hair nicely waved.

But twenty-five pounds was enormous, grotesque, impossible. How could she get hold of twenty-five pounds? She had five pounds of her own in post-office savings certificates. She was earning 30s. a week and paying out of that 10s, towards the housekeeping expenses; 5s. went on fares, and another 5s. on lunch out and incidentals. How could she save £20, save or borrow or make it?

Then her employer sent her as usual to the bank to draw £50 for the month's petty cash. And as usual, he did not ask her how much already lay in the box. She knew. She knew that the previous month had been unusually slack, that postage and messengers and incidental expenses had fallen off, and that a cheque of £10, paid in for a special purpose, had not been used. Twenty-three pounds already lay in the cash-box. If she took out her twenty, nobody would notice until the books went to the auditors, and that was, not for another seven months And by that time she would be rich, she would be famous, she would have repaid the paltry twenty pounds, ten times over if necessary, and would have left the office for ever.

It was providential; it was obvious: it was ordained of God. She sent Mr. Johnson the twenty-five pounds and sat down to await her triumph. But triumph had not come; her letters remained unanswered.

And now confronting Johnson himself, alternatively fierce and apologetic, shuddering with fear, misery and apprehension, she delivered her tremulous ultimatum.

'If you don't let me have the twenty pounds by quarter day, I shall go to the police,' she said. "I shall give myself up. But I shall tell them about you too. I shall tell them to find out what happened to my manuscript. What if you've sold it and kept the royalties yourself?'

This fearful, yet somewhat consoling thought had only just occurred to her. She sat with wild staring eyes watching for its effect.

But Mr. Johnson only smiled at her and patted her on the shoulder. He knew now what line to take.

'You little fool. You poor little silly fool. So, driven like a trapped animal you turn and bite the hand of the only friend who can help you. eh? Now, look here, look here. If you think we've got anything to fear from the police, you just go and tell 'em whatever you like. You just go an' confide in 'em an' tell 'em all about everything. And don't be surprised if it all works out different to what you expect. My dear girl. The Metropolitan and Professional welcomes auditors and police inspections. If any of our clients are dissatisfied, we invite them to investigate our books. 'Smy belief there's not an establishment in London or New York with a cleaner record. But never mind that, The question for the moment is you, not us. Of course, you know, my dear girl, you've done a very, very silly thing'. I'm not sure if for your own sake I ought not to let justice take its own course. It would be a lesson to you - a harsh lesson, I know.

'But I'll look into the business and think about it. You'd better come and see me. now let me see - quarter day's the 25th. Come on the 23rd. 267 Battersea Park Crescent Mansions. Come about half-past eight, and I'll see what I can do. I can't bear to see a woman in the dock - butterfly on the wheel. Woman, woman, Femina variens. Well, well. I'll see what I can do.'

He dismissed her on a high note of masculine unction, and watched her take her way down the steps, then returned to the chair by his desk and swore. For he had not twenty pounds in the world, and did not know at the moment where to lay his hands on it. Yet he did not want Miss Doreen Weller to go confessing her guilt hysterically all over London.

§2

The rain poured down. After the storm of the two previous nights, the broken clouds accumulated and spilled themselves over London. A silvery curtain obliterated Battersea Park. Rain pricked the flat grey surface of the river. Along the road umbrellas bobbed ridiculously.

It would rain. It would rain. Johnson thought of California on a spring morning. He thought of sunlit snow in Canada. He thought of the glowing, stinging warmth of hot sand on a beach washed by the Pacific. Here in London it would rain. Hell!

He stood by his window, a dilapidated brown dressing-gown folded round his rumpled pyjamas, stroking his bristled chin for the sake of the odd prickling discomfort which was more in keeping with his present mood than smooth silkiness. His head ached. Last night he had tried to drown his worries in cheap whisky; but like kittens they had nine lives and would not drown.

The post had brought him nothing but further food for melancholy. Bolivian Central Stock was down again. Rex Buckler wrote to say that if his loan of £500 was not repaid before the end of the month, he would take out a writ - a nice action from a friend to a friend. And to crown everything, Mollie had written one of her querulous, long, I'm-very-unhappy-but-I-mean-to-be-brave letters.

'Darling, I know of course you can't be expected to give up your work just when the book is getting on so well. But of course it is lonely here and I think little Knud misses you too. He says "Dad, Dad!" ever so often. Darling, don't think I'm complaining for I'm not, but it is lonely here in the evenings and I do wonder if I'm going to feel sick right on up to the time with this one.'

Hell, what a day, what a life, what a world! And then Doreen Weller went and got herself into police-court trouble for twenty pounds, to line the pockets of that swine Osborne.

'If I ever catch that son of a . . .' Johnson exclaimed aloud, but the shrill insistence of the telephone cut short his threat. Hitching his dressing-gown round him, he went into the dark stuffy hall.

'Hullo. Hullo. Hullo, blast you. Hullo.'

'Hullo. Good morning. You do sound bright and merry,' cried a rich lazy voice.

'Gloria. My dear. An angel told you I was gonna pass right away unless something nice happened. You've rung up to tell me I can take you outa lunch.'

'Have I? I didn't know it. I really rang you up to ask you to help me.'

'Help you? Ask? Don't think of asking; just say-"Clifton Roderick Johnson, come right over here," an' I'm there.'

'Oh no, you're not. At least not at the moment. Now listen. You know Basil hasn't been a bit well lately. What? No he hasn't. And I think the only thing for him is a spell in the South of France. But he's all worried up about this Cinema Company, and Caroline's been bothering him a lot because it seems that the wind blew in that old factory roof right on top of Macafee's laboratory two nights ago. and just at this very moment a man you'll know - Brooks, his name is -'

'Brooks - not Simon L. Brooks?'

'That's the creature - well, apparently he'd just been down to the studio and taken a fancy to the Tona Perfecta or something. Anyway, life being what it is, everything seems to have happened at once, and what I wondered is whether you, being a dear, wouldn't just trot round and find what has happened and come up to-morrow night and tell us all about it, because I want Basil to keep quiet until he sails -yes - yes, he's going by boat. It's more restful. No, I'm not sure which day. I'm at Hanover Square where I work, so you can't come and see me. I'm supposed at this moment to be receiving particulars of a very exclusive order from a duchess.'

'Am I a duchess?'

'You're a duchess, and you'll be a duke too if you'll hop along and see what's doing.'

She had gone, The telephone clicked and crackled, and the air was robbed of the richness of her voice. Delia? Pshaw! Mollie? Hell! There was only one woman in the world, and she could turn a wet London morning into a golden day. She was regal and human and splendid. She was colour and warmth and light. She was worth even the discomfort of turning out into that rain to discover what had happened to the Christian Cinema Company.

Johnson made no attempt to go to the School in Essex Street. Newspapers commonly demanded cash in advance for advertisements and recently he had been able to afford no insertions. Without advertisements, his clientèle declined immediately. He was in debt for the rent. His letter-box would be full of bills, Life simply was not worth living if one went to an empty office to read bills on a wet March day.

Instead he shaved and dressed and made himself a cup of coffee, and went round to the garage for his car. Halfway round he remembered, with a queer shock of relief, that the car was his no longer. There comes a time when even a long suffering dealer takes action if his instalments are not paid.

'After all I was always scared of the darn thing,' philosophized Johnson, and caught a bus for Annerley. He was in a less desolate mood, because Gloria had rung him up, and because he was going to see her to-morrow night. In the bus he noticed a young girl with dark bright laughing eyes and a scarlet beret pulled down over her black curling hair, a young Jewess, ardently and charmingly alive. He contrived to share her seat, and the contact with her warm firm young body cheered him. After all, there were compensations in the world. Even the chill of the rain on his face was quite agreeable when at last he jumped down from his bus and strode along the pavement to the place where Macafee's hoarding sagged below the weight of its damp flapping posters. A policeman stood outside the hole where Macafee usually entered.

'Greetings, Pyramus,' roared Johnson. 'Where's Thisbe?'

The policeman eyed him with the tolerant impartiality of the law. So early in the morning to be merry, thought he, and an American too. What price prohibition now?

'Can't I go in?' asked Johnson. 'I want to see Mr. Macafee.'

'What paper do you represent?' asked the policeman.

Taper? I'm a friend.'

'Ho - well - I don't know there's any harm in going in. But you mustn't go beyond the ropes. It's not safe. Might all come down any minute.'

'Righto. I know. Sign along the dotted line, eh? Pass, friend, all's well.' And Johnson squeezed his huge bulk through the hole in the hoarding.

He saw an odd sight. The factory itself looked merely more ruinous than ever, but round its debris a rope had been drawn, with large boards marked 'Danger' hung along it at intervals. Inside the rope were housebreakers, working cautiously at the task of removing Macafee's precious apparatus from under the fallen masonry. Beyond the rope small boys, with their strange gift of ubiquity, scuffled in the mud, watching a little knot of people grouped round one diminutive gesticulating figure.

It was Caroline, and she had at length achieved one of her life's ambitions; she had captured the ear of the London Press. When Johnson came up to her, he heard her hurrying excited voice.

'And so he worked just in the old laboratory. Yes, on the Tona Perfecta, which belongs to the Christian Cinema Company - Cinema with the C hard as in the Greek K. Yes -yes, that's most important- to reform the moral and aesthetic standard of the British cinema.'

The rain poured down upon her feathered hat. It dripped on to her nose, her draggled fur, the large embroidered bag in which she carried papers, keys, smelling salts, lozenges and writing-blocks. She did not notice the rain. She did not notice the mud into which her small, ill-shod feet sank slowly, until it began to trickle over the tops of her battered shoes. She did not notice the covert smile of the reporters, who had rarely in all their experience come upon so odd a figure.

She was touching glory. She had told her tale to four different young men, and 'saw the fame of the Christian Cinema Company spreading from pole to pole. Glory burned in her eyes. Glory loosened her tongue. Glory lent lyrical rapture to her words.

'The Church? Yes, of course the Church is interested. Wouldn't you be interested if you saw a movement for reviving the Golden Age of Athens, the Diamond Age of the Renaissance, empurpled with the solemn pall of Christianity?'

The young men were growing bored. It was cold, and they had heard all this before. They were polite, but the old lady was obviously a little cracked and the person whom they really wanted to see was the inventor himself.

'Now this Mr. Macafee?' asked one.

The flood-gates of another stream were loosened.

'Oh, he's a most interesting young man with such a romantic career, a crofter's son from Scotland where I always think they have such wonderful educational opportunities.'

She was muddling it, of course. Johnson, who thought in headlines and spoke in captions, grieved over her amateurish workmanship. She had not recognized him. Her short-sighted eyes saw only one more figure augment the group before her. Johnson knew as well as she did that there are few more exhilarating experiences than that of opening one's heart to the Press. The secrecy of the Confessional contains no comfort like the publicity of the Sunday paper. Caroline was visualizing front page after front page, blazoned with the sensational story of the Christian Cinema Company. She saw herself photographed impressively against the ruins. She saw her beloved Father Mortimer hailed as the hero of an exciting rescue. She saw the faces of the Marshington Smiths, blanching with disappointment as they realized that their interest in the Company had come too late. By the time they wrote from Yorkshire asking for shares, the capital of three hundred thousand - Caroline's present estimate -would have been over-subscribed. The days of hunger and fatigue and disillusionment no longer mattered. Nothing mattered except the opportunity to convert these young men and send them forth into the world as missionaries for the Christian Cinema Company.

She spoke of Father Mortimer and of how he had been injured trying to rescue Mr. Macafee's work. She spoke of Eleanor, and the part which she had played. In her excitement she flew from point to point of her story, growing less and less coherent, until the four young men began to close their note-books and shift their cameras, and hope for a moment favourable to polite departure.

Then Johnson could bear it no longer. He stepped forward into the circle and raised his broad-brimmed hat.

'Good morning, gentlemen. Good morning, Miss Denton-Smyth. My name's Johnson. Clifton Roderick Johnson -proprietor of the Anglo-American School of Scenario writing, and one of the directors of the Christian Cinema Company. Now if there are any other questions you would like to ask, without keeping this lady standing here in the rain much longer, I am at your service. I'm prepared to answer any question, any question at all, about the company, or ourselves, or the Tona Perfecta Film.'

'Well, thank you very much, sir. But I think really Miss Den ton-Smyth has told us everything.' The young man from the Penge and Annerley Observer was due at a local wedding in twenty minutes and wanted to catch his bus. The others were glad enough to follow his example. Indignant, with the chagrin of an outraged craftsman, Johnson watched the Ear of the Press vanish from before him.

But Caroline was in no mood for sorrow. She turned to him with a radiant face.

'Oh, Mr. Johnson, wasn't it too wonderful? I always knew an opportunity would come. But to come just now, when we so much needed something to uplift us. I can't tell you what I felt like yesterday, when I heard that the factory had fallen in, and the laboratory was ruined and not insured, and poor Father Mortimer in hospital. It just seemed as though everything were at an end. And then this morning suddenly everything begins to move. Mr. Brooks has sent for Mr. Macafee. The Press wants the whole story. Brooks will finance us I know and the Press will give us all the advertisement we could possibly want, and I am going back to the office now to get out some new circulars and deal with the correspondence.'

'Have you seen St. Denis?'

'No. Didn't you know? He's ill again, poor man, at least not so very seriously I hope, but he has to go abroad, that's why I'm so very glad you've come because what I feel is that we must all get to work, and then about the signing of the cheques, that's another thing I wanted to say. You know that Mr. St. Denis and I had to sign everything that we paid out, but may I ask if while he is away you would do it, because Mr. Guerdon is very good, but he does rather fuss, you know, I don't think he's really accustomed to business methods and doing things quickly on a big scale.'

Johnson's quick brain was investigating possibilities. The signing of cheques for other people's money always offers opportunities for private enterprise. Things, as Caroline said, were certainly moving. At any moment aid might come from some unexpected source.

'Now you just leave everything to me,' he said. 'I can handle Macafee. I'll deal with the Press. I'll just see to everything. You get right back home an' get your wet things off, for we can't let you catch cold just now.'

'Well, that is kind. I knew you'd help me. Really it is a comfort, because single handed the responsibility really is rather great, and I've been so worried about Father Mortimer - you know he might so easily have been killed, I lay awake all last night shuddering to think of those dreadful walls. I can't bear to look at them.'

They were walking towards the buses. The rain still danced vindictively upon the shining street and pavement, but Caroline did not care.

'How soon do you think the Press will get out our story? Will it be in the lunch-hour edition? I can hardly bear to wait to see what they say. Oh, it's too marvellous.'

'Well, that depends on what papers you saw. I was gonna ask. What did those young men represent?'

'Oh - how stupid of me. Of course, I ought to have asked. I took for granted. Dear me, that just shows one ought never to get excited - well, agencies I suppose. I really don't know. I thought the Press -I mean, one does tell the others, don't they?'

'Well, I expect you'd like me just to see about that for you, wouldn't you? You leave it to me. I'll see what I can do. Can't expect the ladies to do everything, bear all our burdens, you know?'

He put her on to her bus, and waited until she pushed her way up to a front seat and waved at him through the window. The bus carried off her small, draggled, jubilant person, and Johnson pulled out his watch. It was twelve o'clock. He had half an hour to spare before meeting Macafee. He looked hopefully along the road for a hospitable pub, feeling that what he wanted was a drop of whisky to keep the rain out. Signing cheques. Miss Weller's twenty pounds. St. Denis going abroad. Seeing Gloria to-morrow night.

He felt that he had done a good morning's work.

S3

Johnson walked along Elgin Avenue in the clear March night. From Maida Vale tube station the road stretched in polished darkness between its budding plane trees. Though it was only half-past eight, the pavements were almost empty. The straight tapering road, in day-time so commonplace, was disciplined by night to cool austerity. 'Elgin Avenue,' thought Johnson, and the word Elgin brought to him the thought of the Elgin Marbles. 'Greece,' he thought, and saw himself in a cool moonlit gymnasium, watching the pallid greenish light of the moon on naked figures. The glory that was Greece. He straightened his broad back, correcting the stoop which insidiously curved his rounding shoulders. The perfect development of mind and body -freedom both physical and intellectual. He could feel the muscles in his own thighs and stomach responding involuntarily to the fine tension of his mind.

The thought of Greece brought him a strong excitement. His vision of the age of Pericles was oddly compounded from pictures by Alma Tadema, the drop-curtain at the Regina Music Hall, an illustrated edition of Kingsley's Heroes, Isadora Duncan's autobiography, a lantern lecture on the Elgin Marbles, and the film version of The Private Life of Helen of Troy. But from these ingredients he had built up so vivid and detailed a dream country that he could smell the crisp thymy scent of herbs in the sunburned turf. He could feel its warm prickling surface against his body as he threw himself down after the hot sweaty bout of wrestling. In the cool pillared hall behind him, Gloria reclined beside a low semi-circular table, on which stood goblets of wine, and bowls of goats' milk, cheese, and honey, and fruit piled in ample dishes. Three Nubian slaves fanned Gloria. Johnson borrowed the slaves from the bath scene in 'Kismet,' but that did not matter. Gloria's tunic slipped from one soft milky shoulder as she held out her hand with a parsley wreath to crown him victor in the games. Oh Greece! That was the time when men could live like men, unafraid in mind or body.

The soft padding of feet behind him echoed into his dream. He turned and saw, moving in and out of the long line of plane trees, now in gold lamplight, now in faint blue moonlight, the figure of a runner. It was a figure sprung to life from the Elgin Marbles, a young man's figure, white and lithe, loping with long free strides between the plane trees. His head was up, his chest wide, his hands clenched, his lean long legs cut the darkness with a beautiful easy rhythm. He ran as a youth had run from Athens to Sparta (or was it Sparta to Athens?) bringing news of War. He ran as boys run round the wide gymnasium. He was a miracle, a sudden unforgettable beauty, an uncovenanted gift from the gods, the old Greek gods. He was a clerk from Paddington Athletic Association, hurrying home after a late training, in his running-kit.

Johnson forgot his growing paunch, his lumbering weight, his slack muscles and unhealthy skin. He forgot his muddled shiftless way of living, and his doubtful honesty. Tears stung his eyelids, as he stared along the empty road, from which the fleeting vision slowly faded.

By God, that was a sight to see. That was a man's life. That was what the body should be like. Strong, dignified, sane, alive. They knew how to live, those Greeks.

Gloria lived. By God, that was what she was like. She was a Greek. Mollie was a savage, Delia a Cockney; but Gloria was a Greek. She was large and splendid and unafraid. And Basil St. Denis was leaving England.

Johnson felt extraordinarily happy and hopeful.

During the past twenty-four hours, ever since he had watched Caroline interview the reporters, he had sought the key to his new mood. And now Elgin Avenue had supplied it. His happiness lay in the Greek view of life. He must tell that to Gloria. He had so much to tell Gloria. They must go away together. They must go to Greece. Why had he never seen the Acropolis? Why had he never raced knee-deep in asphodel? Why had he never stood, like Isadora Duncan, at the door of the Panthenon? Or was it the Pantheon? - well, anyway, they must go to Greece.

He had small doubt of his success. What could a fine woman like Gloria see in a little affected rabbit like St. Denis, a weedy delicate nincompoop? Fine women needed fine men. Yes, and they got them too, by Gad.

In a high exalted humour he climbed the stairs up to the St. Denis's flat. The steps were dark, except where the worn brass edging made a faint bar of light across them. Unworthy stairs, thought Johnson. Smelling of tom-cats and perambulators. Why doesn't she live in a grander place? St. Denis is probably mean. And she earns the money too. Well, soon she could live in a worthier home. Johnson was in an opulent mood. Nothing would be too good for her if she could come to Greece.

He rang the bell. Gloria herself came to the door.

'Basil's in bed. I've given him about seventy aspirins and made him go to sleep. Come along in.'

He followed her into the warm cosy room and stood on the hearth-rug looking down at her with bright compelling eyes. She curled herself like a great lazy cat on the divan.

'Well, what's your news? Mix me a cocktail for the love of Mike, and tell me something cheerful. I feel as mouldy as a wet week-end, what with Basil ill an' London like it is, an' everything. Tell me I've come into a fortune. Tell me the Christian Cinema Company's either made or bust. I'm tired of it. I'm tired altogether.'

But she did not look tired. She looked golden and grand

and placid. Her long gown of orange velvet made a warm moving mirror for the firelight. She held out a large handsome hand for the cocktail and Johnson saw that her painted finger-nails were bright as cherries.

He was a man of action. He was a Greek.

He stood with one elbow on the mantelpiece looking down at her, telling his news in crisp staccato sentences. He never muddled his own reporting. He was the unequivocal hero of his news.

'I always told Macafee to study Hollywood. He's like all specialists. Keeps his nose in his own work. Won't look around. I don't pretend to be an engineering expert. Ideas are my job. But I knew this right enough. Of course Brooks spotted it at once. The Tona Perfecta's no more use to any company to-day than a sick headache.' Johnson had quite forgotten his own enthusiasm for the film, and Gloria had ceased to take any interest in it. 'And we've paid five hundred for it. Aren't men businesslike?' she sighed.

'Of course, that doesn't mean Macafee's no good. On the contrary I pointed out to Brooks this new colour stuff's first rate. He'll do big things, that young man - when he's learned his lesson.'

'But we've got no rights over the new stuff, have we?'

'We? Who's "we"? Now look here, Gloria, honestly. Who cares a hoot for the Christian Cinema Company? You don't. St. Denis doesn't. Isenbaum never comes near us now. All he wanted was to make himself pleasant to your husband, 'smy belief. Now, honest, wasn't it? I guess old Guerdon won't care. He's scared stiff of everything. Won't blow his own nose for fear of germs on his handkerchief. The only person who'd really give a dime for the whole damn concern is Caroline, an' she's crazy. Well, I mean, you can't keep a thing going to please Caroline, can you? An' she's got her curate.'

'Got what?'

'Oh, she's sweet on that young curate. What's his name? Mortimer. The one who got hurt in the crash. Poor old bird. One of those old-maid-sweet-on-the-parson complexes. That'll keep her happy for months. You know, we never ought to have thought we could run a business concern with

her as secretary. She's about as much knowledge of business as a flea has of higher mathematics. Of course, we didn't want to be unkind, an" all that. I quite see. But it's gotta come to an end some day. An' we're only losin' money. I've been going into the books a bit. We've been payin' money to printers, lawyers, God knows what. Hadn't you better call a meetin'; pay our bills with what assets we've got, an' wind up the affair, an' start afresh?'

Even as he spoke he saw himself as the strong practical man, coming to the rescue of these stranded idealists. He lifted burdens of responsibility from Gloria. He put St. Denis to shame. His energy was like a rushing mighty wind. He swept poor Caroline out of her incongruous position in Victoria Street and set her down in a nice suitable alms-house in the country, somewhere among hollyhocks and cabbage-roses, with a thatched roof and a cat, and a kettle on the hob. He swept Gloria out of Maida Vale and set her down in Greece among wild thyme and asphodel.

Gloria acquiesced in his rhapsodies. She was not really thinking about Johnson. Her thoughts were with Basil, whom she had kept in London through a dark chill winter when he needed sun and warmth. It was her fault that he was ill again. Without the Christian Cinema Company, he would have left for Nice last October, and stayed there until the warm weather came. The whole affair had been a stupid mistake. She ought to have seen from the beginning that a company run by Caroline Denton-Smyth was inevitably absurd. She ought not to have let Basil's sense of humour run away with her sense of business values. She fell into a mood of unwonted self-dissatisfaction. Tired of London, and of the Maida Vale flat and Hanover Square, she began to wonder whether a hat-and-dress shop in the Boulevard des Moulins might not, after all, be a good investment, now that Monte Carlo was developing a summer as well as a winter season. She hardly noticed when Johnson took her hand, still talking; but when his flow of conversation stopped, as he bent to cover her fingers and wrist with kisses, she raised herself on one elbow and looked at him, amused interrogation in her eyes. He interrupted his kisses to shout at her with tumultuous exaltation.

'We'll go to Greece - Athens, the Parthenon.'

'Athens is an awful hole,' she said. 'All the hotels have bed-bugs and you can't get a decent cocktail.'

She was not really surprised that Johnson kissed her, for men were taken that way quite frequently, it seemed to her. Indeed, she had been kissed so often and in so many ways that his boisterous onslaught hardly interrupted her speculations about Monte Carlo, and the word Athens only fitted itself into her plans for Basil's health.

But she consented to dine with him after Basil's departure, because she would then be lonely and she felt in need of some diversion. Johnson amused her, as a bear or a sheepdog or a bad film might amuse her. She did not even object to his clumsy and grotesque love-making. She knew how to take care of herself. She had never been fastidious, and she could amuse Basil by recounting the big man's absurdities. Her solicitous and constant affection for her husband was a sentiment untouched by any casual adventure. It was the normal attitude of her heart and mind, the pole to which the needle of her life's compass swung. Basil was her child, her lover, her husband and her friend; he was part of herself, and she was part of him. Johnson, posturing dramatically on the surface of her consciousness, simply did not touch her. It did not even occur to her that he was taking seriously the possibilities of her promise to dine at his flat. But later that night she recounted his absurdities to her husband.

'And how was our friend Johnson?' asked Basil.

'More he-mannish, dirty, and businesslike than ever. I wish he'd trim his finger-nails before he tries to make love.'

'Did he make love to you?'

'Of course he did. A little. He wants us to dissolve the C.C.C. What do you think?'

'I don't care a damn. It was a farce from the beginning. I can't think why I thought it would amuse me. I suppose that we can cut our losses and just let the thing die a natural death. If Johnson wants to take the trouble of doing it, let him."

And that, so far as Basil St. Denis was concerned, was the end of the Christian Cinema Company.

§4

Supper was ready, and not supper only. Fate was ready. Life was ready. All time and circumstances stood waiting with Johnson in his sitting-room at the Battersea flat. The lobster lay pink and exquisite, swimming in a bath of white wine sauce, needing only five minutes over a gas-flame to bring it to perfection. The table was spread with olives and cold chicken and salad and trifle in glass goblets. The champagne reclined opulently in a bucket of ice. Red carnations cast their shadows like purple petals across the damask cloth. The fire leapt on ruddy wings. The cigarettes lay in their silver box. Johnson stood gazing down upon his handiwork, and with jubilant appreciation found it good.

This was the night, and at any moment Gloria might arrive. She was coming, his own, his sweet, with the majesty of a ship in full sail, with the gallant port of a queen. The Battersea flat had known former festivals, but nothing could be like this. And to-morrow, to-morrow they would cross to Paris together. All the plans were laid. Gloria should have the whole day in which to pack her boxes, to tell her firm in Hanover Square that her husband had been taken ill, then she could join Johnson at Victoria for the night boat-train. Oh, it was easy, when the practical brain was lifted on the winds of high imagination, to devise, to risk, to scheme, to conquer. It was sublime. What if he had, while helping Caroline to straighten the affairs of the Christian Cinema Company, contrived to divert to his own pockets £437 17s. 6d.? What if, in the eyes of the law, he was no longer merely an adventurer, but a felon too? His love was greater than the law, and to-morrow he would have escaped. He was going to take his Gloria to Greece.

For the hundredth time he crossed to the window, brushed back the curtains and looked out across the park. The pale grey evening lay in delicate silence. Before her coming spring had cast a faint enchantment upon the air, so that the trees in the park and the hidden line of the river seemed to be hushed and waiting. Johnson felt that he too was hushed and waiting. He felt as though the black buds on the trees must swell with his swelling heart, that the ground must tingle with apprehension, while the crocuses unfolded and the flowers - he was a trifle vague about which flowers -pierced the dark soil with their green spears. All the world sang one song. She is coming. She is coming. She is coming. Spring? Gloria? Who knew, who cared? For were they not all one? Oh, this was ecstasy. He could have wept with pity for the poor, dull, lifeless creatures who had never known this rapture of expectation.

Then, just when his imagination had leapt beyond it, so that for the moment he expected it no longer, he heard the door bell ring. He dropped the curtains and stood facing the little room. Everything in it was perfect to his eyes. If never again he was to taste perfection, he would have had this hour.

He went down the passage, flung the door open, and saw, not Gloria, but Miss Doreen Weller.

'Good evening,' said Miss Weller. Her voice was high and unnatural. 'You were expecting me, weren't you?' And before he had time to collect his scattered wits, she was in the flat. She was in the sitting-room. She had seen the supper-table.

Johnson was horrified. His sense of decency was outraged by the thought that this ugly, untidy, stupid, revolting creature should peer through her pince-nez on to the room prepared for Gloria. There she stood gaping down upon the table, the carnations and the champagne.

'Oh,' she said. 'Oh.' And then her face hardened and a gleam of vindictive cunning lit her eyes. 'Oh, but you can't get away with it like that, you know. I haven't come to be made a fool of. I've got a boy friend now, and he's waiting outside, and I've come for my twenty pounds, and if you don't let me have it within ten minutes, he's going for the police.'

Thank God she was in a hurry. Thank God she would go soon.

'Now, now, young lady,' he said, with a mild severity. 'Now just remember that you've got no right here, and that you are in a very awkward position. If I chose to give you up to the police as a common thief, I could. I have no legal responsibility whatsoever for you or your manuscript. 'Smatter of fact, I've made inquiries, and your stuff is still on its way round publishers. One day you may be getting a letter to say it's been taken, and you'll be sorry then that you let yourself jump to conclusions.'

Johnson was playing for time. The truth was that until the moment when she entered his flat he had completely forgotten Miss Weller and her twenty pounds. Her visit to him had taken its place among the many other perplexities which he would escape by his retreat from England. England was full of troubles. Its civilization had become too complex. A man never knew where he was in it. At any moment Miss Weller might appear demanding twenty pounds, creditors might issue writs, or women like Mollie might write distressing letters.

'Do you realize,' he repeated, 'that this is blackmail, and that the penalties for blackmail are even higher than the penalties for theft? You can't come here and demand twenty pounds like this. You paid that money to me under legal conditions which have been fulfilled. You remember that in my prospectus,' his resourceful brain was supplying him with new expedients as he talked, 'I definitely declared that I only accepted manuscripts at my clients' risk. I cannot possibly undertake that every novel submitted to me will be published.'

'But you said you'd help me.' Her defiance was melting before his stern solemnity.

'Yes and I wanna help you. I don't like to see a girl like you ruin all her chances in life for an act of folly. I've been thinking a great deal about you since you came to me, an' how I could help you best. But it seems to me that you gotta face the music. If I gave you the money now, I'd be an accessory after the act, an' I hold myself in patria potestas -' He meant loco parentis, but one Latin phrase was really as good as another. 'I've gotta think what's the best for you in the long run.' He was temporizing, for he had not yet made up his mind whether to give her the money and get rid of her before Gloria arrived, or to get rid of her without paying. He had bank-notes in the house, but giving her these would leave him short for his journey. Oh Hell, what a life! Wasn't it just too bad that this wretched sordid accident should break in upon his mood of ecstasy?

'But you must help me. I tell you, I've got a friend. I know your correspondence college is rotten - I've been to other girls. What happened to Miss Holden's stories, and Mr. Peter's? Where's Mr. Osborne now? Tell me that!' She was growing hysterical again. Her voice rose to a scream. All her doubts of the integrity of the Correspondence School returned to her. 'Why do you run that correspondence school? Why aren't you writing books yourself? Isn't it true that only the men who can't publish their own stuff try to teach other people how to write? How many of your pupils have you got into real jobs? How much have you ever really done for any of us? You cheat, you swindle, you take our money under false pretences. To buy champagne.' Gasping with sobs she seized the gold-covered neck of a bottle. 'Champagne. Champagne! and I shall have to go to prison.' Suddenly losing all control of herself, she flung the bottle across the table. It caught the vase of carnations and went crashing to the floor. Violence led to violence. Miss Weller caught up the tablecloth, and Johnson's supper fell round him in chaos. He lumbered round the table and caught the girl's hands, wrestling against her hysterical violence, as she snatched at his collar and tried to scratch his face.

'I'll kill you, I'll kill you,' sobbed Miss Weller. 'Thief! Swindler! Beast! Beast! Beast!'

'Well, really,' said a cool deep voice from the doorway. 'This is a pretty spectacle. Is it a private fight, or can anyone join in?'

Johnson and Miss Weller sprang from their struggling embrace, and faced Gloria, who stood contemplating them with calm amusement.

'The door was open, and hearing somebody sound all hot an' bothered I walked in. Is this the party you promised me?'

Johnson caught at his disordered collar and stared, and stared. For the first time in his life, he could find no word to say.

Miss Weller, with a final scream, collapsed among the broken glass and crockery, and crouched sobbing on the floor.

'Don't you think you'd better say something?' asked Gloria. 'Or would you rather I did not disturb your confidential interview? No thanks, I won't come in. It looks rather messy, and I've got a decent frock on.'

It was a lovely frock. Never had she looked more rich and splendid and desirable. She held her cloak of golden tissue and brown fur tightly about her with one jewelled, cherry-tipped hand. The light from the passage glittered on her swinging ear-rings. She raised her eyebrows and looked from Johnson to the girl.

He still stared at her, speechless and ridiculous, seeing her as a goddess remote from mortal imperfection, as a bright loveliness, as the beauty and crown of life.

She shrugged her shoulders.

'Well, I suppose I ought to inquire whether you're murdering or seducing this young woman or something. But I'm tired, and I want my dinner. And as you seem to be otherwise occupied, I think I'll say good night.'

She had gone. He heard the door of the flat slam behind her. Only then did he find his tongue.

'Gloria! Gloria! Mrs. St. Denis! Comeback.' He pushed the table over in his blind rush for the door, completing the ruin of his own room. He hurled himself down the passage, and fumbled with the Yale lock. But the catch had slipped, and it had always been difficult to open. By the time he reached the street, she had climbed again into the taxi which had brought her and had vanished among the jostling traffic. He knew then that he had lost her beyond all hope of recovery. He stood bare-headed and wild-eyed, staring up the street, but he had no hope of her return, and none of her forgiveness.

He climbed slowly and heavily up the stairs. In his flat the wretched Doreen Weller still wept among the broken tumblers. All that he wanted now was to get rid of her. He went to the desk, unlocked it, and from a leather wallet took out four five-pound notes. He had intended them for Gloria's expenses on the way to Paris. He had intended them to pay for Pullman cars and flowers. He crushed the notes into a ball, and thrust them into the girl's damp fingers.

'Here's your damned money; you little fool,' he said. 'Now get to Hell outa here.'

Slowly she opened her hand and unfolded the notes upon her knee. Slowly the realization that she was saved reached her dazed and angry mind. Slowly she climbed to her knees and to her feet, pushed the notes into the shabby leather purse which she had dropped on to the chair, and, still sobbing quietly, found her way out of the room. Without a word, she went off down the passage, and Johnson heard her snivelling until the door of the flat slammed for a second time, and he was left alone.

He stooped to gather up the red carnations, now drenched in champagne, trodden upon and broken, and as he fumbled clumsily among the scattered olives and glass and flowers, the sense of his desolation swept down upon him.

The telephone broke shrilly upon his misery. At first he let it ring; then the absurd hope that it might be Gloria, which even as it rose to his mind, he rejected, sent him to the instrument. He heard a familiar voice.

'Hallo. Hallo. Is that you, old dear? I say. You know who this is? Yes, Delia! Look here. You do anything to-morrow? 'Cause I'm bored. This damn job's come to an end. I've got the chuck. Couldn't we go somewhere?'

'Couldn't we?' Johnson responded to the old appeal. 'Look here, lil' old thing. What about Paris?'

'What, Paris! You don't mean it! Oh, boy. This is so sudden.'

'Yes I do. You gotta passport? Good. I'll get two tickets for the boat-train at Victoria 8.20 to-morrow night. Let's do a little trip together. Yes. Yes. I've got the cash all right. Need a holiday.'

'But honest. Not joking?'

'Abso-ballyutly. I was thinking of going off f'ra day or two in any case.'

'Well, I don't mind. But how will all your good works get along without you? What'll you do about your Christian Cinema Company and poor Caroline?'

Johnson laughed into the telephone. 'I'm fed up with the lot of 'em. You're the only woman in the world I can bear to look at at the moment. You won't let me down, darling, will you? We'll have a lovely time together. A lovely time. We might go to Egypt. Cairo, you know, an' Alexandria. 'Smy belief I've been in London too long. Say, baby, we'll paint Europe red, an' to Hell,' he was about to add 'with Gloria!' but checked himself in time with a laugh that was half a sob, and called to her, 'to Hell with your Poor Caroline!'

Chapter 7 : Caroline Audrey Denton-Smyth

§1

on Thursday, April 4th, Caroline faced her depleted Board across her pile of papers. From the chair, Mr. Guerdon blinked and cleared his throat. Hugh Macafee sprawled reluctantly on her right.

She despised both of them. Mr. Guerdon was a conventional man. At last she saw beyond his apparent liberality and progressiveness to his temperamental and invariable timidity. He could do nothing unsafe, and nothing that his fathers had not done before him. She had been deceived at first because, his fathers having been Quakers, pacifists, humanitarians and radicals, he had pursued these interests from filial convention and lack of initiative, just as in other circumstances he would have pursued imperialism, tariff reform, evangelicalism and fox hunting. Well, she knew him now. He was of no more use to her.

Hugh Macafee was purely selfish. He had never cared for the high ideals of the company. All that he wanted was to find someone who would finance his inventions.

She could manage them. That morning she had taken an egg beaten up with the remainder of Father Mortimer's brandy for her breakfast. She felt that she could face tigers on an egg.