"It will offend people." "I want to offend people," Laurence intoned. "If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out." "Well, you did," said John. "You put in a _y_ instead." "I'm not jesting, my dear fellow." "Nor am I," said John. "What I want you to understand is that you can't bring the Virgin Mary on the stage. Why, I'm even doubtful about Joan of Arc's vision of the Archangel Michael. Some people may object, though I'm counting on his being generally taken for St. George." "I know that you are writing a play about Joan of Arc, but--and I hope you'll not take unkindly what I'm going to say--but Joan of Arc can never be more than a pretty piece of medievalism, whereas Thomas ..." John gave up, and the next morning he told the household that he was called back to London on business. "Perhaps I shall have some peace here," he sighed, looking round at his dignified Church Row library. "Mrs. James called earlier this morning, sir, and said not to disturb you, but she hoped you'd had a comfortable journey and left these flowers, and Mrs. George has telephoned from the theater to say she'll be here almost directly." "Thank you, Mrs. Worfolk," John said. "Perhaps Mrs. George will be taking lunch." "Yes, sir, I expect she will," said his housekeeper. CHAPTER V Mrs. George Touchwood--or as she was known on the stage, Miss Eleanor Cartright--was big-boned, handsome, and hawklike, with the hungry look of the ambitious actress who is drawing near to forty--she was in fact thirty-seven--and realizes that the disappointed adventuresses of what are called strong plays are as near as she will ever get to the tragedy queens of youthful aspiration. Such an one accustomed to flash her dark eyes in defiance of a morally but not esthetically hostile gallery and to have the whole of a stage for the display of what well-disposed critics hailed as vitality and cavaliers condemned as lack of repose, such an one in John's tranquil library was, as Mrs. Worfolk put it, "rather too much of a good thing and no mistake"; and when Eleanor was there, John experienced as much malaise as he would have experienced from being shut up in a housemaid's closet with a large gramophone and the housemaid. This claustrophobia, however, was the smallest strain that his sister-in-law inflicted upon him; she affected his heart and his conscience more acutely, because he could never meet her without a sensation of guilt on account of his not yet having found a part for her in any of his plays, to which was added the fear he always felt in her presence that soon or late he should from sheer inability to hold out longer award her the leading part in his play. George had often seriously annoyed him by his unwillingness to help himself; but at the thought of being married for thirteen years to Eleanor he had always excused his brother's flaccid dependence.