“Skeffington’s have written urging me to undertake a rather original advertising scheme. They’re very pressing, and they’ve enclosed a tenner in advance. They want me to do them a tragedy in four acts. I sent them the scenario last week. I sketched out a skeleton plot in which the hero is addicted to a strictly moderate use of Skeffington’s Sloe Gin. His wife adopts every conceivable measure to wean him from this harmless, even praiseworthy indulgence. At the end of the second act she thinks she has cured him. He has promised to gratify what he regards as merely a capricious whim on her part. ‘I will give—yes, I will give it up, darling!’ ‘George! George!’ She falls on his neck. Over her shoulder he winks at the audience, who realise that there is more to come. Curtain. In Act 3 the husband is seen sitting alone in his study. His wife has gone to a party. The man searches in a cupboard for something to read. Instead of a novel, however, he lights on a bottle of Skeffington’s Sloe Gin. Instantly the old overwhelming craving returns. He hesitates. What does it matter? She will never know. He gulps down glass after glass. He sinks into an intoxicated stupor. His wife enters. Curtain again. Act 4. The draught of nectar tasted in the former act after a period of enforced abstinence has produced a deadly reaction. The husband, who previously improved his health, his temper, and his intellect by a strictly moderate use of Skeffington’s Sloe Gin, has now become a ghastly dipsomaniac. His wife, realising too late the awful effect of her idiotic antagonism to Skeffington’s, experiences the keenest pangs of despair. She drinks laudanum, and the tragedy is complete.” “Fine,” I said, finishing the coffee. “In a deferential postscript,” said Julian, “Skeffington’s suggest an alternative ending, that the wife should drink, not laudanum, but Sloe Gin, and grow, under its benign influence, resigned to the fate she has brought on her husband and herself. Resignation gives way to hope. She devotes her life to the care of the inebriate man, and, by way of pathetic retribution, she lives precisely long enough to nurse him back to sanity. Which finale do you prefer?” “Yours!” I said. “Thank you,” said Julian, considerably gratified. “So do I. It’s terser, more dramatic, and altogether a better advertisement. Skeffington’s make jolly good sloe gin, but they can’t arouse pity and terror. Yes, I’ll do it; but first let me spend the tenner.” “I’m taking a holiday, too, today,” I said. “How can we amuse ourselves?” Julian had opened the last of his letters. He held up two cards. “Tickets for Covent Garden Ball tonight,” he said. “Why not come? It’s sure to be a good one.” “I should like to,” I said. “Thanks.” Julian dropped from his hammock, and began to get his bath ready.