I recall that during the course of the talk Mrs. Shaw told a story of an Irish lad sentenced to be hanged in the Tower for his revolutionary activities. Before his execution they came to him and promised that if he would give the authorities information regarding certain leaders in the movement his life would be spared. To this the lad, only about eighteen years of age, replied, “Gentlemen, you are wasting your time and mine.” Mrs. Shaw quoted this speech with great fire. “How,” she concluded, “can you conquer a people with a spirit like that?” When we drifted away from the Irish situation Mr. Shaw and I had a chance for a talk about motion-pictures. To my surprise I learned then that he was a picture enthusiast. He told me that there were two people whose films he never missed--Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford. Regarding the former, he was especially enthusiastic. I found, in fact, that he was as familiar with Chaplin’s work as am I myself. The affectionate courtesy displayed toward each other by the playwright and his wife is bound to impress any one familiar with some of Shaw’s iconoclastic utterances upon the domestic situation. Certainly the atmosphere surprised me. The pair did not address each other as “Father” and “Mother,” but, aside from this failure, they seemed to be as tolerant and contented and settled as a hardware merchant of Topeka and his wife. Toward the latter part of the afternoon I saw Mr. Shaw look frequently at his wrist-watch. Ultimately he mentioned that he was due to deliver a lecture that evening. “And have you decided yet what you are going to speak about?” queried Mrs. Shaw when at last her husband rose to depart for this engagement. “Not yet,” he retorted; “I dare say I shall decide on the platform.” I always think of Mr. Shaw as he looked when he made this reply. His eyes, which are, I think, the clearest and most living blue I ever saw, so sparkled with merry perversity, his figure was so erect and spare and vigorous--there was so much spring in both face and physique--that he seemed to me--this man past middle age--the very embodiment of electric youth. I suppose that he had that same expression of merry perversity when on the following day he told a newspaper reporter who called upon him to learn the outcome of his conversation with me, “Everything is all right. There is only one difference between Mr. Goldwyn and me. Whereas he is after art I am after money.” Whatever the explanation, Mr. Shaw never came to America, nor did he do any work for the Goldwyn Company. I was no more fortunate in the result of my call upon Mr. H. G. Wells. He, like Mr. Shaw, had me at his home in London for tea. Here, however, the conversation focussed, not upon Ireland, but upon India, a direction determined by the fact that a young East-Indian was calling upon the author that afternoon.