So to the stage with its vast cobwebbed walls, its huge echoes and the mysterious darkness of the flies, where looped ropes and grimy festoons of forgotten scenery hung still as seaweed in a deep sea. There, in the sour and characteristic odour of an empty stage, Edwin would wait for her in a little alcove of the whitewashed wall in which iron cleats were piled, and the unmeaning murmur of the rehearsal would come to him mingled with the shrill voice of the producer, who ended every sentence with the words “my dear,” or “old boy,” and the noise of the carpenter hammering wood in the flies. His original acquaintance, Miss Latham, discreetly avoided him, but the comedian, Bertie Flood, seemed inclined to be familiar. One morning he dragged Edwin off to his dressing room for a smoke. He sat with his legs on either side of a chair, his fawn-coloured bowler on the back of his head, looking more than ever like a bookie. “Well, old boy,” he said, “how goes it? How’s the little Beaucaire?” “She’s all right, as far as I know,” said Edwin, who was inclined to resent the description. “Ma had any headaches lately? I know what ma’s headaches will end in. Cirrhosis of the liver. You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Well, I know all about that. Had it myself. Just realised in time that it didn’t pay. Now I never touch anything but gin. Do you want a word of advice?” Edwin thanked him. “May seem funny from a chap that gets two hundred a week for making a damn fool of himself.” “Not at all,” said Edwin politely. “Well, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go easy in that direction. Treat it as a business proposition. Ma’s a bad old woman . . . only don’t tell her I said so. You see I’m a friend of the family. Dear little girl, Rosie, too. _Verbus Satienti_—I always let ’em think I was at Oxford—Good for business.” It was rather disturbing; for though it was no news to Edwin that Mrs. Beaucaire’s headaches were euphemistic, the fact had done no more than contribute to the ideal qualities with which he had invested her daughter. There was something romantic as well as pitiful in the idea of Rosie’s contrasting innocence: the rose that has its roots in foulness is not less a rose. It had even seemed to him that the complete collapse of Mrs. Beaucaire might throw Rosie into his arms: a situation that would be full of romantic and tender possibilities; and the girl’s inimitably virginal air was enough to convince him that Bertie Flood’s other suggestions were no more than the natural products of a mind degraded by the atmosphere of the music-hall. He was convinced too that he had no cause for jealousy. Ever since he had first visited her, Rosie had never spent more than a few hours of daylight out of his sight.