The man he addressed, a fellow-actor in Lord Strange’s company, stood up sulkily before him. He was a neurotic player of women’s parts, and somehow uncleanly attractive to the sex he paraphrased. Perhaps he understood it enough to be feared by it--a lithe vicious creature, as white-faced as a girl, and subject to feminine spites and hysterics. He hated the playwright just now, not only because the latter owed him money, but because the two were rival suitors for the favour of some riverside Thaïs. It was a pitiful association, as who, regarding that other figure of bright genius, could not but feel. Not yet thirty, with blue eyes and honey hair, the face of an angel, the forehead of a sage, the indulgence of insatiable appetites had already marked down this Christopher Marlowe for death or insanity. He seemed to find no adequate satisfaction for his passions’ hunger short of feeding their ravenous fires, as Cellini fed the molten arteries of his Perseus, with dishes and quart measures. “An you had one?” protested the player. “What! with your _Edward_ still mouthing it at the ‘Rose’?--a damned play.” “A damned play lines no purses,” said Marlowe. “Pay me my pound, I say.” “For what? To frank you to the stews? A man were a fool so to accommodate his rival.” “Ah! You fear my rivalry.” “I fear the woman’s cupidity, sir. If Kit with gold, the better; but gold at any price, says she. So they compound. Will you take a post-obit?” “I want my money, Kit Marlowe.” “How the parrot repeats! No, on my honour, Frank, on my honour. I am drunk out. Should I not otherwise have been before you with the girl? I cannot pay.” A shadow darkened the lattice, and Archer, on the point of retorting, paused with his mouth open. Some stranger, attracted by the colloquy, had stopped to listen. He came round now by the open porch and entered the room. “By your favour, sirs,” he said, “I overheard a name to whose possessor methought I owed a duty. Was not it Master Marlowe’s, the playwright’s.” Christopher nodded, without rising. “Duty’s a dry debt,” said he. “I would you had ought the name that cup of burnt sack which my present poverty denies me.” The new-comer was a young man--little more than his own age--of a very fine and distinguished appearance. His face was delicate and handsome, but a little irregular in its contour, as if its commanding intelligence were easily at the mercy of its humour. A chestnut moustache and beard, small but already strong, clothed a jaw a thought underhung. The eyes above were wonderful--brown vivacious lights of sagacity that seemed to take all observation for their province. A comely compact figure, of the average height, clothed sombrely but richly in purple velvet, a snowy ruff, a flexible black hat with a rolled band of silk above its brim--such completed a personality which was as attractive as it was compelling.