“Do you mind if I talk?” she said. “You look so homish to me. I can’t get on with these London people a bit.” He made room for her on the roll of carpet, and she sat beside him. “Yet, my dear,” he answered, “you seem to be very popular.” “With those silly boys, yes! But even they are different. I say, I’m sure you know all about playing in Shakespeare. I do wish you’d be an absolute dear, and hear me my lines. I’m certain I shall get a fearful ‘bird’ from his Nibs.” (His Nibs was her name for the eminent producer.) “It’s the blank verse that does me. I’ve never tackled verse before, except ‘I am Lily, called the Flowers’ Queen, the goodest, sweetest fairy ever seen.’ You know—you flip up through a star trap and get it off your chest, where the white limes meet.” She delivered the cheap couplet with perfect mimicry of pantomime style, then clapped her hands and laughed gaily. Eliphalet caught the infection of her spirit, and laughed too. “But you will be a dear, and help me, won’t you?” she appealed, picking a speck of fluff from the knee of his trousers. “I say, you didn’t brush yourself very carefully this morning, did you?” “I stand corrected,” said Eliphalet; “but my dresser is away on his holiday.” “Aren’t you married, then?” “No—not now.” Mornice’s face became serious at once. “You poor dear, I am so sorry. Is she——?” But Eliphalet took the book from her hand. “Come,” he said, “let us hear those lines. We will go down this corridor, where we shall be undisturbed.” As a rule, when you hold the book for someone who is almost a stranger they are anxious and awkward, but it was not so with Mornice. “It’s just here where she enters with the Player King. There! Got it? Right-o.” In a second she flung herself into the spirit of the scene. Gesture, voice and feature were alike unchained to the emergency of the situation. At the right moment she dropped to her knees and with outstretched arms poured forth the protestations of undying fidelity with ringing vibrations of emotion. When she had finished, she sprang to her feet and exclaimed: “There! that’s the best I can do!” Eliphalet was amazed. Never before had he seen anyone more liberally endowed with natural ability. And yet he knew this ability was misguided—that Mornice June suffered from a fatal facility. Spontaneous ease of obtaining effects is perhaps the most dangerous asset an artist may possess. You will find it in legions of draughtsmen, who will dash off what is seemingly the cleverest sketch and actually a mere tangle of inaccuracy—wrong in every line and detail. They are born with a box of tricks—any one of which may be drawn from its docket at a second’s notice. Reach-me-down art—and as unlike the real thing as a city tailor’s ready-for-wear garments to the creations of a Savile Row expert.