She fell to wondering whether, had their first meeting been now instead of then, she could have sat the night through in his rooms without fear of consequence. And while she wondered upon these matters, Wynne’s eyes travelled critically over her face and figure. “You’re rather drab,” he thought; “you haven’t much colour. If your hair were dressed differently it would be an improvement, perhaps. That is certainly a deplorable dress—and your hands!” A man whose function is to produce plays acquires a ready knack of judging possible qualities by external indications. The habit is not one to be recommended in the home, for in practising it he is apt to overlook many essentials and ignore grave liabilities. A just man would not accuse a sweep of possessing a blackened soul because his face was sooted from sweeping the flues. The instance may sound trivial enough, but it is no less trivial than the train of thought running through Wynne’s lightly-poised mind as he contemplated the wife of his own making. His eyes were deceived by petty superficiality, and blinded to the beauty veiled behind a screen of three years’ unremitting toil. He did not bother to speculate if that beauty would leap to glorious life at the touch of the hand that swept the screen away. To follow his thoughts to their inglorious anchorage, he was sensible to a wave of self-pity. It seemed rather ill-luck, with the ball of success at his feet, a fresh glow of manhood ripening in his veins, that he should be tied to a woman who had lost the fine edge of her desirability. “I see,” said Eve at last; “and do you propose to disappoint them?” Wynne dropped his cigarette into the grate. “I never know what I propose to do. The greatest mistake in the world is to cut the picnic sandwiches before knowing what the weather will be.” II It was more to please his humour than from any liking for the lesser grades of courtship that Wynne came to amuse himself at the theatre by talking perilous rubbish to a highly unimportant young lady of the cast. Never before had he indulged in this particular sport, and never, until lately, had the temptation to do so allured him. To tell the truth, he was not a little flattered by the success of his early attempts at love badinage; although, had he chosen to look beneath the surfaces of the very shallow waters which were ruffled by his wit, he would have found little cause for self-congratulation. Esme Waybury, the favoured, had an ax to grind. In her trivial soul was ambition to get on (“getting on” implying the receipt of a salary large enough to satisfy her tastes in shoe-leather and millinery). A little moral laxity is sometimes a short road to the realizations of these trifles. Favours, artfully bestowed in the right quarter, are often more fruitful of success than is genuine talent.