What was it, please, he put the question to himself with a heat which seemed to give even the shady end of the terrace the inconvenience of an exposure to full sun, they expected him to come _to_, or, still worse, for having probed the wound he must not flinch with the scalpel, to come _for_? Oh, no, he had not forgotten _The Reprobate_, and what angered him was that _they_ hadn’t, either. He had not forgotten a blessed one of the plays he had written for the country towns a score of years ago, when he had been bitten by the tarantula of the theatre, and, remembering them, he felt now viciously capable of biting the tarantula back. He had written them, God forgive him, for country towns. He positively shuddered when he found himself in a country town, to this day. The terrace at Scratchem notoriously commanded a distant prospect of at least three, in as many counties, with cathedrals, famous inns, theatres—the whole orthodox equipment, he summed it up vindictively in cheap journalese, of country towns. Vindictive, too, was his reflection that these objects of his old crazy solicitude must have been revolutionized in twenty years, their cathedrals “restored,” their inns (the “A.B.C.” vouched for it) “entirely refitted with electric light,” their theatres turned into picture palaces. All the old associations of _The Reprobate_ were extinct. It was monstrous that it should be entirely refitted with electric light. And in the crude glare of that powerful illuminant, with every switch or whatever mercilessly turned—didn’t they call it?—“on,” he seemed to see the wretched thing, bare and hideous, with no cheap artifice of “make-up,” no dab of rouge or streak of burnt cork, spared the dishonour of exposure. The crack in the golden bowl would be revealed, his awkward age would be brought up against him, what Maisie knew would be nothing to what everybody would now know. His agony was not long purely mental; it suddenly became intercostal. A sharp point had dug him in the ribs. It was Lady Jemima’s, it couldn’t _not_ be Lady Jemima’s, pink parasol. Aware of the really great ease of really great ladies he forced a smile, as he rubbed his side. Ah, Olympians were unconventional indeed—that was a part of their high bravery and privilege. “Dear Master,” she began, and the phrase hurt him even more than the parasol, “won’t you take poor little _me_?” The great lady had read his telegram! Olympian unconventionality was of a licence! “Yes,” she archly beamed, “I looked over your shoulder at lunch, and——” “And,” he interruptingly wailed, “you know all.” “All,” she nodded, “_tout le tremblement_, the whole caboodle. Now be an angel and take me.” “But, dear lady,” he gloomed at her, “that’s just it. The blest play is so naïvely, so vulgarly, beyond all redemption though not, thank Heaven, beyond my repudiation, caboodle.”