Wynne went to his bedroom and pulled out a drawer. He threw a shirt or two and some collars on to the bed, then rummaged for a suit case behind the dressing-table. “Damn the things, I can buy what I want,” he said. Eve heard the front door slam a moment later. III At the offices of the New British Drama Association Wynne met some important gentlemen, and the words they spoke acted upon him like good red wine. “It’s an astonishing play,” said Mr. Howard Delvin, who was not given to encomiums. “So astonishing that we propose to use it for our opening event.” “I thought _you’d_ like it, Mr. Delvin,” said Wynne. “I don’t like it—I dislike it very much indeed. I said it was an astonishing play, and that is exactly what I meant. Your wit is positively polar, there is no other word; and your philosophy is glacial—with all the hard, clear transparence of ice. My personal inclination is to put the whole play in a stewpan and boil it, for if any man were clever enough to raise its temperature to blood heat he would have achieved a play—I say it in all sincerity—of incomparable worth. However, we’re satisfied, and now well see if we can satisfy you.” When Wynne departed from that erudite circle he felt almost sublime—like nightingales sang their words of praise. A wild elation prompted him to sing, to dance, to fill his lungs with the thin air of the high peaks to which he had leapt. With youth in one hand and success in the other there were no limits to the achievements which might be his. He felt a frenzied desire to celebrate—to celebrate wildly. He lunched at Scott’s, and ordered a lobster, because its livery was scarlet, and a rare champagne, because it beat against the glass. He pledged himself and the future—the broad, untrammelled future—and drank damnation to the cobwebs of dull care. The wine fired his brain and imagination, restocked his courage, and set his heart a-thumping. “Paper and an envelope and some Napoleon brandy,” he called to the waiter. And when these were brought: “I was a waiter once—just such a fellow as yourself—a very devil of a waiter. Here’s a sovereign. Go and be happy.” The white paper lay before him, and he dashed a dozen careless words across its surface. The envelope he addressed to his wife. “Here,” he cried, “send that along in an hour or two. God bless you.” He rose and pushed his way through the swing doors. IV Clementine Rendall spent the morning in a peculiar fashion. He first called on his banker, and, armed with many banknotes, took a cab to the Vandyke Theatre. At the stage door he inquired for Miss Esme Waybury. “Just gone,” said the doorkeeper, “half an hour ago.” “Unfortunate. Now I wonder when I could see her. Comes out about eleven at night, I s’pose?” “Get out ’bout nine. Understudyin’, she is.” “I wonder if you could ask her to wait a little tonight.”