"Well, I was an ass!" he said softly. Then he remembered what he ought to have done at first. "I say, I'm most tremendously obliged to you, old fellow." "Well, you came to the rescue. We were absolutely stuck up for the rest of the money--couldn't go on without it, and didn't know where to get it. Then you planked it down--and I tell you I felt it! You gave me my chance, and I made up my mind to give you one if I could. It's only your being at the Bar that made it possible--and my being in the office, of course." "But it wasn't much of a chance I gave you, unfortunately." "You mean because it was a failure? Oh, that makes no difference. I was on the wrong tack. I say, Lisle, my new play's fixed. We're rehearsing now. The Twentieth Society's going to do it on Sunday week, and, if it's a go, they're going to give me a week at Manchester. If that's all right, I ought to get a London run, oughtn't I?" His voice was very eager and excited. "If I do, and if it's a success"--(How the "Ifs" accumulated!)--"I shall chuck the office!" It was his old climax, his old hope, aspiration, vision. Arthur heard it again, had heard him working up to it through that procession of "Ifs," with a mixture of pity and amusement. Would the new play do the trick, would "real life" serve him better than the humours of farce? Would that "success" ever come, or would all Tom Mayne's life be a series of vain efforts to chuck an office ultimately unchuckable, a long and futile striving to end his double personality, and to be nobody but Claud Beverley? Full of sympathy, Arthur wondered. "It's bound to be a success, old chap. Here, have a cigarette, and tell me something about it." Eagerly responding to the invitation, the author plunged into an animated sketch of his plot, a vivid picture of the subtleties of his heroine's character and the dour influence of her environment: the drama was realistic, be it remembered. Arthur listened, nodding here and there, now murmuring "Good!" now "By Jove!" now opening his eyes wide, now smiling. "Oh, jolly good!" he exclaimed over the situation at the end of the First Act. Meanwhile _Crewdson v. The Great Southern Railway Company_ lay on the table between them, unheeded and forgotten. It too, had it been animate, might have mused on the twists of Fortune. This afternoon at least it might have expected to hold the pride of place undisputed in Arthur Lisle's chambers! But not until the scenario of the drama had been sketched out to the very end, not until Arthur's murmurs of applause died away, did Claud Beverley turn again into Tom Mayne. And the transformation was woefully incomplete; for it was with a sad falling-off in interest, indeed in a tone of deep disgust, that he said, "Well, I suppose we must get back to that beastly case!"