'I think it will work out all right.' 'What will work out all right? You're an hour later than you said you'd be.' 'Never mind about the hour,' he answered and began to weave a story about his meeting with a pal from London, as he was leaving the pier the other day: he hadn't spoken to her about it before, not caring to do so until something definite had happened. 'What has happened?' Kate asked, and Dick, his face aglow, related how the pal had spoken of a great revival of interest in comic opera, especially in French music, and that many city men with plenty of money were on the lookout for somebody who knew how to produce this class of work and was in sympathy with the Folies Dramatiques tradition. Kate, who believed everything that Dick told her, listened with a heightened temperature. At Margate the admirer of Hervé's music became an American who wished to see _Chilpéric, Trône d'Écosse, Le Petit Faust, L'Oeil Crevé, Marguerite de Navarre_, reproduced as they had been produced under the composer's direction when Dick was stage-manager at that theatre. The American was interested in Hervé; for he not only wrote the music but also the words of his operas. Hervé was, therefore, the Wagner of light comic opera. And if the new venture received sufficient support from the public Dick would like to add other works by Hervé--_La Belle Poule_ and _Le Hussard Persecuté_--and having puzzled Kate with many titles and an imaginary biography of this musical American he fell to telling her of Blanche D'Antigny, singing all the little tunes he could remember and branching off into an account of _Le Canard à Trois Becs_. This last opera was not by Hervé, but the American liked it and might be persuaded to produce it later on.