“Crikey!” said Mrs. Viveash. ... Somewhere, somewhere. But in my veins creep the maggots of the pox.... “Really, really!” Mrs. Viveash shook her head. “Too medical!” ... crawling towards the brain, crawling into the mouth, burrowing into the bones. Insatiably. The Monster threw himself to the ground, and the curtain came down. “And about time too!” declared Mrs. Viveash. “Charming!” Gumbril stuck to his guns. “Charming! charming!” There was a disturbance near the door. Mrs. Viveash looked round to see what was happening. “And now on top of it all,” she said, “here comes Coleman, raving, with an unknown drunk.” “Have we missed it?” Coleman was shouting. “Have we missed all the lovely bloody farce?” “Lovely bloody!” his companion repeated with drunken raptures, and he went into fits of uncontrollable laughter. He was a very young boy with straight dark hair and a face of Hellenic beauty, now distorted with tipsiness. Coleman greeted his acquaintances in the hall, shouting a jovial obscenity to each. “And Bumbril-Gumbril,” he exclaimed, catching sight of him at last in the front row. “And Hetaira-Myra!” He pushed his way through the crowd, followed unsteadily by his young disciple. “So you’re here,” he said, standing over them and looking down with an enigmatic malice in his bright blue eyes. “Where’s the physiologue?” “Am I the physiologue’s keeper?” asked Gumbril. “He’s with his glands and his hormones, I suppose. Not to mention his wife.” He smiled to himself. “Where the hormones, there moan I,” said Coleman, skidding off sideways along the slippery word. “I hear, by the way, that there’s a lovely prostitute in this play.” “You’ve missed her,” said Mrs. Viveash. “What a misfortune,” said Coleman. “We’ve missed the delicious trull,” he said, turning to the young man. The young man only laughed. “Let me introduce, by the way,” said Coleman. “This is Dante,” he pointed to the dark-haired boy; “and I am Virgil. We’re making a round tour—or, rather, a descending spiral tour of hell. But we’re only at the first circle so far. These, Alighieri, are two damned souls, though not, as you might suppose, Paolo and Francesca.” The boy continued to laugh, happily and uncomprehendingly. “Another of these interminable _entr’actes_,” complained Mrs. Viveash. “I was just saying to Theodore here that if there’s one thing I dislike more than another, it’s a long _entr’acte_.” Would hers ever come to an end? “And if there’s one thing _I_ dislike more than another,” said the boy, breaking silence for the first time, with an air of the greatest earnestness, “it’s ... it’s one thing more than another.” “And you’re perfectly right in doing so,” said Coleman. “Perfectly right.” “I know,” the boy replied modestly. When the curtain rose again it was on an aged Monster, with a black patch over the left side of his nose, no hair, no teeth, and sitting harmlessly behind the bars of an asylum.