“I know I am not up to the mark yet,” she replied, “but I’ll let myself go to-morrow.” Then, quite satisfied that her own case was established, she turned to vital matters. “Pummy! you’ll have to get your hair cut, you know. You can’t possibly play a smart doctor, and keep it long.” “I have realised it, my child.” He looked at her with a queer smile, and said, “Are you Delilah, I wonder?” It is to be regretted that Mornice had little knowledge of the Old Testament. She asked for particulars. “A lady who cut off Samson’s hair. Shorn of his locks, his power departed.” Then his mind came from east to west with a vengeance. “I am glad I took you from the Cinema before it was too late.” “Too late?” “H’m. You are cinema-acting very alarmingly in ‘A Man’s Way.’ Coding, my dear, coding; I will show you to-morrow.” On the morrow he was ready for her in earnest, and realising this, Mornice flung herself into the part with startling energy. He did not allow her to go far before holding up his hand. “My dear,” he said, “try to remember you are playing the part of a married woman who is at variance with her elderly husband. Do not therefore swing an imaginary sun-bonnet, or smile and blink your eyes at the audience, as though each one was a potential lover. You have three acts in which to gain their affections—not thirty feet of film.” “Oh, you are horrid,” said she. “Not at all. Believe me, this—this bright stuff is entirely misplaced.” So she came on again, and this time resembled a woman torn by conscience after rifling a church of its plate. “And now you go to the opposite extreme—you will have no emotions left for the big moment in the last act, if the opening of a door causes you so much distress.” When the ordeal was over, Mornice was a trifle piqued. “I don’t think he ought to have gone for me like that before the company, Ron—do you?” But Ronald Knight was an honest lad, and answered: “After all, there was sound stuff in what he said.” A reply which put him in prompt disfavour for a period of twenty-six hours, at the end of which time they met, by a kind of mutual magnetism, and kissed each other with enthusiasm in the dressing-room corridor. “You are sorry for what you said?” “I am sorry it offended you, but I think it is up to us to do what the old chap wants. After all, he’s taking a big risk.” Ronald Knight was beginning to feel some uneasiness about the wheels he had set in motion. Having some knowledge of what a well-put-on production costs, he wondered if Eliphalet’s resources were up to the strain.