A little paint did her no harm, and the accentuation of her eyebrows and lips and the calculated disorder of her hair were not more than her powerful effulgent physique could stand. In a costume of green and silver she was magnificent, overwhelmingly magnificent. Her varying voice and her glance at once sincere, timid and bold, produced the most singular sensations behind Edward Henry's soft frilled shirt-front. And he thought that he had never been through any experience so disturbing and so fine as just standing in front of her. "I ought to be saying nice things to her," he reflected. But, no doubt because he had been born in the Five Towns, he could not formulate in his mind a single nice thing. "Well, what do you think of it?" she asked, looking full at him, and the glance too had a strange significance. It was as if she had said: "Are you a man, or aren't you?" "I think you're splendid," he exclaimed. "Now please!" she protested. "Don't begin in that strain. I know I'm very good for an amateur--" "But really! I'm not joking." She shook her head. "What do you think of my part for Rose? Wouldn't she be tremendous in it? Wouldn't she be tremendous?... What a chance!" He was acutely uncomfortable, but even his discomfort was somehow a joy. "Yes," he admitted. "Yes." "Oh! Here's Carlo Trent," said she. He heard Trent's triumphant voice, carrying the end of a conversation into the room: "If he hadn't been going away," Carlo Trent was saying, "Pilgrim would have taken it. Pilgrim--" The poet's eyes met Edward Henry's, and the sentence was never finished. "How d'ye do, Machin?" murmured the poet. Then a bell began to ring and would not stop. "You're staying for the reception afterwards?" said Elsie April as the room emptied. "Is there one?" "Of course." It seemed to Edward Henry that they exchanged silent messages. V Some time after the last hexameter had rolled forth, and the curtain had finally fallen on the immense and rapturous success of Carlo Trent's play in three acts and in verse, Edward Henry, walking about the crowded stage, where the reception was being held, encountered Elsie April, who was still in her gorgeous dress of green and silver. She was chatting with Marrier, who instantly left her, thus displaying a discretion such as an employer would naturally expect from a factotum to whom he was paying three pounds a week. Edward Henry's heart began to beat in a manner which troubled him and made him wonder what could be happening at the back of the soft-frilled shirt front that he had obtained in imitation of Mr. Seven Sachs. "Not much elbow-room here!" he said lightly. He was very anxious to be equal to the occasion. She gazed at him under her emphasized eyebrows. He noticed that there were little touches of red on her delightful nostrils. "No," she answered with direct simplicity. "Suppose we try somewhere else?"