"Plays!" said Patrick, looking up moodily. "Anything is good enough for plays. You see I can always fall back on the acting and crack up that. I had to do that with Owen's thing at the _Lymarket_. My notice read like a gushing account of the play, in reality it was all devoted to the players. The trick of it is not easy. Those who can read between the lines could see that there were only three of them about the piece itself, and yet the outside public would never dream I was shirking the expression of an opinion about the merits of the play or the pinning myself to any definite statement. The only time, Owen, I dare say, that your plays are literature is when they are a frost, for that both explains the failure and justifies you. But, an you love me, Taffy, or if you have any care for my reputation, do not, I beg of you, be enticed into the new folly of printing your plays." "But things have come to that stage I _must_ do it," said Owen, "or incur the suspicion of illiterateness." "No, no!" pleaded Patrick in horror. "Sooner than that I will damn all the other printed plays _en bloc_, and say that the real literary playwrights, conscious of their position, are too dignified to resort to this cheap method of self-assertion." "But you will not carry out your threat? Remember how dangerously near you came to exposing me over your _Naquette_." The Club laughed. Everyone knew the incident, for it was Patrick's stock grievance against the dramatist. Patrick being out of town, had written his eulogy of this play of Owen's from his inner consciousness. On the fourth night in deference to Owen's persuasions he had gone to see _Naquette_. After the tragedy, Owen found him seated moodily in the stalls, long after the audience had filed out. "Knocked you, old man, this time, eh?" queried Owen laughing complacently. [Illustration: "_Knocked you, old man, this time, eh?_"] "Yes, all to pieces!" snarled Patrick savagely. "I shall never believe in my critical judgment again. I dare not look my notice in the face. When I wrote _Naquette_ was a masterpiece, I thought at least there would be some merit in it--I didn't bargain for such rot as this." In this wise things would have gone on--from bad to worse--had Heaven not created Cecilia nineteen years before. Cecilia was a tall, fair girl, with dreamy eyes and unpronounced opinions, who longed for the ineffable with an unspeakable yearning. Frank Grey loved her. He always knew he was going to and one day he did it. After that it was impossible to drop the habit. And at last he went so far as to propose. He was a young lawyer, with a fondness for manly sports and a wealth of blonde moustache. "Cecilia," he said, "I love you. Will you be mine?" He had a habit of using unconventional phrases. "No, Frank," she said gently, and there was a world and several satellites of tenderness in her tremulous tones. "It cannot be."