"Jolly good thing it happened to-night, and not to-morrow!" exclaimed Joe. "But it probably will happen to-morrow too," the author insisted. Arthur was laughing at the two when Miss Ayesha Layard, in the third of her wonderful frocks, came in front and tripped up to them. "If anybody's cold, they'd better go behind and listen to old Langley," she remarked, as she sank into the stall by Arthur's side. She had a large towel tied round her waist, and adjusted it carefully beneath and round her before she trusted her frock to the mercies of the seat. "I once spoilt a frock in my early days, and old Bramston boxed my ears for it," she explained to Arthur. Then she turned round and regarded Mr. Beverley with an air of artless and girlish admiration. "To think that he wrote this masterpiece! He who is known to, and will soon be adored by, the public as Claud Beverley, but who in private life----" "Shut up, will you!" commanded Mr. Beverley with sudden and fierce fury. "If you do happen to--to----" He was in a difficulty for a phrase and ended without finding it--"Well, you might have the decency to hold your tongue about it." "Sorry, sorry, sorry! Didn't know it was such a secret as all that." The offended man looked implacable. "If you don't forgive me, I shall go and drown myself in that bath! Oh, well, he won't, so never mind! Here, Joe, take him out and give him a drink. There's just time before closing." "First-rate idea!" Joe agreed cordially. "Come along, old chap." Mr. Beverley allowed himself to be led away, mournfully yet faintly protesting. "Funny thing he should mind having his real name known, isn't it? I'm sure I shouldn't mind mine being known, if I had one, but I don't think I have. I recollect being called 'Sal' at the theatre. Old Bramston--the one who boxed my ears, as I said--named me. He'd been out in the East as a young man and liked reading about it. So, when he named me, he combined his information, like the man in Dickens, and made up the name you see on the bills. It'll descend to posterity in old Langley Etheringham's memoirs. He's writing them, his wife told me so. Well, what do you think of the theatre--inside view--Mr. Lisle?" "I think it's extraordinarily interesting." "I've been in it all my life, and I wouldn't change. It takes your mind off things so--sort of gives you two lives. You come down here in the blues over your debts, or your love-affairs, or something--and in five minutes you're somebody else, or--" She gave a little laugh--"rotting somebody else, which is nearly as good." "By Jove, that's exactly what it does do!" cried Arthur. "It's done me heaps of good." "You'll have got something for your money, anyhow, won't you?" "Oh, but I want to get more than that!"