YOU. Unless you’re a duchess yourself? FRIENDLY CREATURE. I am. At least I was. Only I chucked it. YOU. But you said you were a lady. FRIENDLY CREATURE. So I am. An extra lady—front row, second O.P. YOU. How rude of me. Of course you were a duchess. I know you perfectly. Gorell Barnes said—— FRIENDLY CREATURE. Drop it. What’s the good of the secrecy of the ballet if people are going to remember every single thing about you? (At this point the rain stops. By an adroit flanking movement you get away without having to buy her a lunch.) Everyone congratulated me. “Always knew he had it in him,” “Found his vocation,” “A distinctly clever head,” “Reaping in the shekels”—that was the worst part. The “Moon,” to a man, was bent on finding out “how much Sidney Price makes out of his bits in the papers.” Some dropped hints—the G.M., Leach, and the men at the counter. Others, like Tommy Milner, asked slap out. You may be sure I didn’t tell them a fixed sum. But it was hopeless to say I was getting the small sum which my ten per cent. commission worked out at. On the other hand, I dared not pretend I was being paid at the usual rates. I should have gone broke in twenty-four hours. You have no idea how constantly I was given the opportunity of lending five shillings to important members of the “Moon” staff. It struck me then—and I have found out for certain since—that there is a popular anxiety to borrow from a man who earns money by writing. The earnings of a successful writer are, to the common intelligence, something he ought not really to have. And anyone, in default of abstracting his income, may fall back upon taking up his time. It did, no doubt, appear that I was coining the ready. Besides the _Strawberry Leaf_, _Features_, and _The Key of the Street_ were printing my signed contributions in weekly series. _The Mayfair_, too, had announced on its placards, “A Story in Dialogue, by Sidney Price.” This, then, was my position on the morning when I was late at the “Moon” and lost my bonus. Whilst I went up in the lift to the New Business Room, and whilst I was entering the names and addresses of inquirers in the Proposal Book, I was trying to gather courage to meet what was in store. For the future held this: that my name would disappear from the papers as suddenly as it had arrived there. People would want to know why I had given up writing. “Written himself out,” “No staying power,” “As short-lived as a Barnum monstrosity”: these would be the remarks which would herald ridicule and possibly pity. And I should be in just the same beastly fix at the “Hollyhocks” as I was at the “Moon.” What would my people say? What would Norah say?