I wrote it with some pleasure to myself amid the Yorkshire Wolds, and was able to read it to the whole company assembled before the close of the season. My turning of the last page was followed by a dead silence. The leading lady was the first to speak. She asked if the clock upon the mantelpiece could be relied upon; because, if so, by leaving at once, she could just catch her train. Hodgson, consulting his watch, thought, if anything, it was a little fast. The leading lady said she hoped it was, and went. The only comforting words were spoken by the tenor. He recalled to our mind a successful comic opera produced some years before at the Philharmonic. He distinctly remembered that up to five minutes before the raising of the curtain everybody had regarded it as rubbish. He also had a train to catch. Marmaduke Trevor, with a covert shake of the hand, urged me not to despair. The low comedian, the last to go, told Hodgson he thought he might be able to do something with parts of it, if given a free hand. Hodgson and I left alone, looked at each other. “It's no good,” said Hodgson, “from a box-office point of view. Very clever.” “How do you know it is no good from a box-office point of view?” I ventured to enquire. “I never made a mistake in my life,” replied Hodgson. “You have produced one or two failures,” I reminded him. “And shall again,” he laughed. “The right thing isn't easy to get.” “Cheer up,” he added kindly, “this is only your first attempt. We must try and knock it into shape at rehearsal.” Their notion of “knocking it into shape” was knocking it to pieces. “I'll tell you what we'll do,” would say the low comedian; “we'll cut that scene out altogether.” Joyously he would draw his pencil through some four or five pages of my manuscript. “But it is essential to the story,” I would argue. “Not at all.” “But it is. It is the scene in which Roderick escapes from prison and falls in love with the gipsy.” “My dear boy, half-a-dozen words will do all that. I meet Roderick at the ball. 'Hallo, what are you doing here?' 'Oh, I have escaped from prison.' 'Good business. And how's Miriam?' 'Well and happy--she is going to be my wife!' What more do you want?” “I have been speaking to Mr. Hodgson,” would observe the leading lady, “and he agrees with me, that if instead of falling in love with Peter, I fell in love with John--” “But John is in love with Arabella.” “Oh, we've cut out Arabella. I can sing all her songs.” The tenor would lead me into a corner. “I want you to write in a little scene for myself and Miss Duncan at the beginning of the first act. I'll talk to her about it. I think it will be rather pretty. I want her--the second time I see her--to have come out of her room on to a balcony, and to be standing there bathed in moonlight.” “But the first act takes place in the early morning.” “I've thought of that. We must alter it to the evening.”