Here Raven intervened with, “You are so extreme, my dear Raymond. After all, Cellini was a great artist, and in my conception——” “Look here, Raven,” said Wakefield, running his fingers through his pinky-yellow hair, “you’ll have to stop away from rehearsals if you can’t shake those absurd ideas from your brain. The Cellini I want, and mean to have, is the man who had _liaisons_ with his models, committed murders, and yet was an artist _malgré lui_. You see what I mean?” He fired the query at Eliphalet. “You’ve read the biography, of course?” “I have little leisure for reading,” replied the actor, feeling a trifle dazed. “You must do so at once, then. Come on, and I’ll go over some passages with you now at the Savage. Reynolds, take the crowd scenes—we’ll be back by two.” And he gripped Eliphalet to whisk him away. But Eliphalet Cardomay would not allow himself to be hustled. “Mr. Wakefield,” he said, “I have eight days in which to study a long and important role. I do not choose to squander any of these precious hours in profitless discussion. Let us proceed to rehearse at once.” This was mutiny—rank mutiny. It is doubtful whether the great Sir Owen Frazer, at present seated at the back of the stalls, would have presumed to say as much. Raymond Wakefield’s cherubic face went into a series of straight lines. He had never before been openly defied and his sense of humour deserted him. It deserted him for eight consecutive days, during which time he gave Eliphalet Cardomay every kind of hell. Unmindful of the very characteristics which had prompted him to make the engagement, he caught up every stereotyped inflexion, each elaborate gesture, and subjected it to the most rigorous criticism, analysis and correction. In justice it should be admitted that, according to modern standards, there was a very sound reason for all his suggestions. Raymond Wakefield was never at a loss for reasons. He kept up a running fire of interrogation as to what Eliphalet was driving at, and Eliphalet never could answer. “Why chant that passage as though it were a hymn, when the whole intention of the line is—Ouch! You speak the stuff like the ancients spoke blank verse. There! When you are telling Pietro to bring you ‘raw gold’—you say ‘raw gold’ as though it were something sacred and divine. My dear fellow, it’s the stuff you’re working in every day of the week. Try and imagine yourself a plumber saying to his mate, ‘Get us a lump of putty, Jack.’” At first Eliphalet resented this treatment hotly, but he was no match for this electric young man. On the third day of rehearsals he had been so ill-advised as to retort. “You forget that I was acting many years before you were thought of.” He regretted the words almost before he had spoken them.