Eva suddenly stopped talking, and blushes covered her soft white cheek. She turned to Gwen. “Darling, is that Ronald Sinclair standing near the Rotunda?” “Yes, dearie, it is he; and George Murray is coming up to him with Lelia Dale. They have seen us.” Sinclair, accompanied by his two friends, walked towards our group and was the first to speak. “Have you heard, Lionel, that the manager of the Olympus is forced to close the doors of his theatre?” “I expected that would soon happen,” murmured Danford. “It was inevitable,” answered Lionel; “when music of that kind lies shivering without its usual toggeries, it must perish; for when crotchets and semi-quavers do not any longer help to pin a scarf or lift up suggestively the corner of a laced petticoat, comic opera has lost its meaning.” “My dear Lord Somerville, you do not seem to grasp the real state of things. The Atrium will follow suit, and before you are a week older the great priest of upholsterers will have to retire,” vexatiously retorted Sinclair. “Yes, and very probably he will be joined in exile by Turn Bull, who has no further need to study Abyssinian _bassi-relievi_. As you see, I quite grasp our present state of affairs,” smilingly answered Lionel. “I think I agree with you, Lord Somerville,” languidly remarked Lelia Dale, who had for years been the jewel of dramatic art. “Turn Bull had developed to the highest degree the psychology of clothes.” “I should call it the physiology of palliaments,” interrupted Murray, the apostle of subtle environment. “Yes, George,” resumed the flower of the profession, “he has often made me blush with the pruriency with which he endowed his vestments; and my maidenly modesty was less offended by a kiss from his lips than by the erotic influence of his draperies in certain parts of his _répertoire_.” “Do not forget, though,” suddenly broke in Sinclair, “that we had arrived at the highest manifestation of local colour; and that the true-to-life surroundings with which we framed our plays had reached the desideratum of the most fastidious art critic. Surely plays represented at the Théâtre Français nowadays, or as they used to be at our Atrium and Arcadia, were truer to life than when Phèdre wore a Louis XIV. Court dress, or Othello a frill?”