night, she remarked, a strange gentleman came, a foreigner of some sort, and asked for chocolates. A very entertaining gentleman with a bag, which he asked her to keep. No fear, she observed; no bombs or things in _her_ shop--take it to the cloak-room in the station. Well, he must have done so, for they got it out of there after his arrest. Here was his photograph in the Sunday paper. Millions of francs he'd stole. Like a novel, wasn't it? The author said it was, very, and begged for more. He said she ought to write them down. Mabel looked grave at this and said she had a fellow ... splendid education he had had. Was in the Prudential. Her voice grew low and hesitating. He was going to give it up! Give up the Prudential? But that was a job for life, wasn't it? Ah, but he had it in him.... It appeared that he had won five pounds for a story. It was wonderful the way he wrote them off. In his spare time. And poetry. He was really a poet, but poetry didn't pay, the author was given to understand. So he wrote stories. Some people made thousands a year. This was all very well from Mabel's point of view, but the author did not want to go into the vexed question of royalties. He wanted, on the contrary, to know Mabel's feelings towards the coming Maupassant of North London. Did she love him? Or rather, to put the matter in another way, did he love her? Was he permitted that supreme privilege? Well, they had been going round together, on and off, this nine months now. As for being _engaged_ ... he only got two pound a week as yet, remember. Yes, that was why she wanted him to go in for this writing and make a hit. She'd take it on and make ends meet somehow, if he did that. She could help him. He said she had some good ideas, only they wanted working out. And here was a secret--he'd written a play! Mabel leaned over the candy jars and whispered this dreadful thing in the author's ear. A friend of theirs had seen it--he was at one of the theatres in the electrical department and knew all the stars--and he said it was very good but needed what he called pulling together! If only a reliable person in the play-writing line could be found to do this pulling together, there might be a fortune in it.