Matilda, returning to the study, said: "What a nice voice that boy has got." "I used to expect great things of Panoukian," said Old Mole, "but then neither he nor I had seen beyond Oxford." "Is he very clever?" "He used to have the sort of cleverness schoolmasters like. It remains to be seen whether he has the sort of cleverness the world needs. He is very young." "Not so _very_ young." "Like your party?" "Oh, yes." "You looked very pretty." "Thank you, sir." "Good girl. What about bed?" But she was loth to move. She began several topics, but soon dropped them. At last she plunged: "Millie's going into a new piece. It's a real play this time. It's about the stage and there are to be a lot of chorus girls in it. She says she could get me in easily." Old Mole took this in silence. "I won't go if you don't like it," she said. "Have you said you would go?" "Yes, yes." "Do you want to?" "What else is there for me to do?" Indeed, what was there? He was saddened and angry at the use of the argument. He had wanted her to feel free, to come and to go, so long only as she treated him with frankness, and here he had so far failed that she had made arrangements to return to the theater and then asked for his _post facto_ consent. What was it that kept her in awe of him? Not his thoughts of her, nor his feeling for her, so far as he knew either. . . . He kissed her good night and sat sadly brooding over it all: but it was too difficult for him, and he was tired and his humor would not come to his aid. He sought refuge in books, but they yielded him none, and at last Panoukian's phrase recurred to him: "Perhaps," he said, "perhaps I am a Harbottler in marriage, nibbling at love. God help me if I am." He thought surely he had reached the worst. But Fate is inexhaustibly ingenious. He was to have his bellyful of Harbottling. Among his letters on the morning after the party he found one, the envelope of which bore in print the name of Langley Brown, Literary and Dramatic Agent, 9 Coventry Street, W. This letter informed him that Mr. Henry Butcher, of the Pall Mall Theater, proposed to immediately produce--(the split infinitive is Mr. Langley Brown's)--a play called "Lossie Loses," by Carlton Timmis, the rights of which Mr. Brown believe to be in Mr. Beenham's hands. And would Mr. Beenham call on Mr. Brown, or, if not, write to give his consent, when the contract would be drawn up and the play produced. He had almost forgotten Carlton Timmis. The letter had been forwarded through his banker. He stared at it, turned it over and over, read it again. It seemed to be an authentic document. He handed it to Matilda. She said with awe: "Mr. Butcher!" And, with unconscious imitation of the humor of the English Bench, Old Mole asked: "Who is Mr. Butcher?"