"Well," said Edward Henry, "I should like to meet an architect who had thoroughly got it into his head that when people pay for seats to see a play they want to be able to _see_ it, and not just get a look at it now and then over other people's heads and round corners of boxes and things. In most theatres that I've been in the architects seemed to think that iron pillars and wooden heads are transparent. Either that, or the architects were rascals! Same with hearing! The pit costs half-a-crown, and you don't pay half-a-crown to hear glasses rattled in a bar or motor-omnibuses rushing down the street. I was never yet in a London theatre where the architect had really understood that what the people in the pit wanted to hear was the play and nothing but the play." "You're rather hard on us," said Mr. Alloyd. "Not so hard as you are on _us_!" said Edward Henry. "And then draughts! I suppose you think a draught on the back of the neck is good for us!... But of course you'll say all this has nothing to do with architecture!" "Oh, no, I shan't! Oh, no, I shan't!" exclaimed Mr. Alloyd. "I quite agree with you!" "You _do_?" "Certainly. You seem to be interested in theatres?" "I am a bit." "You come from the north?" "No, I don't," said Edward Henry. Mr. Alloyd had no right to be aware that he was not a Londoner. "I beg your pardon." "I come from the Midlands." "Oh!... Have you seen the Russian Ballet?" Edward Henry had not--nor heard of it. "Why?" he asked. "Nothing," said Mr. Alloyd. "Only I saw it the night before last in Paris. You never saw such dancing. It's enchanted--enchanted! The most lovely thing I ever saw in my life. I couldn't sleep for it. Not that I ever sleep very well!--I merely thought, as you were interested in theatres--and Midland people are so enterprising!... Have a cigarette?" Edward Henry, who had begun to feel sympathetic, was somewhat repelled by these odd last remarks. After all the man, though human enough, was an utter stranger. "No thanks," he said. "And so you're going to put up a church here?" "Yes." "Well, I wonder whether you are." He walked abruptly away under Alloyd's riddling stare, and he could almost hear the man saying, "Well, he's a queer lot, if you like." At the corner of the site, below the spot where his electric sign was to have been, he was stopped by a well-dressed middle-aged lady who bore a bundle of papers. "Will you buy a paper for the cause?" she suggested in a pleasant, persuasive tone. "One penny." He obeyed, and she handed him a small blue-printed periodical of which the title was "_Azure_, the Organ of the New Thought Church." He glanced at it, puzzled, and then at the middle-aged lady. "Every penny of profit goes to the Church Building Fund," she said, as if in defence of her action. Edward Henry burst out laughing; but it was a nervous, half-hysterical laugh that he laughed. II