"I _told_ dear George Alexander that I would have been only _too_ pleased to understudy Irene in the new piece--in fact, it would have just suited me, Mr. Rathbone, and left me plenty of time for my social engagements too. Besides, if I once got a chance of a part like that I feel I should have made a hit. Oh, it was a cruel disappointment! After being too charming to me--or, at any rate, I was charming to him at the Cashmores' reception, you know--I remember he was standing in the refreshment-room with Mrs. Cashmore, and I went _straight_ up to him and said, 'Don't you remember me, Mr. Alexander?'--and after all this he only promised me--and that conditionally--a horrid, silly little part in the curtain-raiser in No. 2 B Company on tour. On tour! Of course I refused that--one must keep up one's prestige, Mr. Rathbone. There's a great deal of injustice in the profession. Talent counts for nothing--it's all influence. But I've always had a great ambition ever since I was a little girl." Miss Luscombe put her head on one side and talked as she had to the interviewer of _The Perfect Lady_. "It was always my dream--do you know?--to marry a great actor--or, at any rate, to be his great friend--like Irving and Ellen Terry--that sort of thing--a great, lifelong friendship! And as a child I was madly in love with the elder George Grossmith, but I don't think he ever knew it. Too bad!" She pouted childishly, gave her arch musical laugh with its three soprano notes and upward inflection, and then accepted a quail with a heavy sigh. "When I was a boy," said Rathbone in a low concentrated voice of reminiscence--he spoke rather quickly, for he had been trying in vain during the whole of dinner to get a word in edgeways and feared to lose his chance now--"when I was a boy I was in love, too, with some one on the stage. Between ourselves--you won't mention it, will you, Miss Luscombe?----" "You can trust me," she said earnestly, with a look of Julia Neilson. "Good! Well, I was in love, and I've got her initials--C. L.--tattooed on me now!" "Impossible! How exciting! Who is C. L.?" He looked round the table and murmured in a low voice, "Cissie Loftus. Isn't it odd? I wrote and told her about it, but I never received an answer to my letter." "Poor, poor boy! I call that really touching! Will you show me the initials some day?" "Oh no. Impossible." He was stern, adamantine. She hastily went on. "So you're very keen--interested in the stage, Mr. Rathbone?" "Well, in the stage door. I collect programmes, and I haven't missed a first night since I was twenty!" "Fancy! Then I ought to remember your face, at all the theatres!" "I mean at the Gaiety," he said, "only the Gaiety." "Oh, the Gaiety!" she turned her shoulder to him. * * * * *