“Have you ever been behind the scenes? I used to go sometimes, just for the fun of it, while it was a novelty; but it quite cured me of any possible taste of the stage. Most of the performers were so nervous they could hardly speak, their teeth just chattered with cold and fright mingled, and the gloom of it was like a vault. And then all the gaping, staring faces in rows, looking out of the darkness. You can’t think how idiotic people look seen like that. It always suggested to me that both stage and stalls were like children playing at being lunatics.”
“That’s only your dreadfully prosaic, unromantic mind, Hal. You just like to write newspaper articles, and type letters, and smother your imagination under dry-and-dust facts.”
“Smother my imagination,” echoed Hal, with a laugh. “Why, it would take the imaginations of fifty ordinary people to concoct some of the paragraphs we fix up during the week. My imagination is a positive goldmine at the office, at least it would be if they dare print all that I suggest.”
“You should run a paper yourself,” suggested Hermon; “a few libel actions would made it pay like anything.”
“Ah, you haven’t seen Dudley,” with a little grimace. “Dudley would have a fit and die before the first action had had time to reach its interesting stage. I’d take you home to see him now, but he happens to have gone up to Holloway to dinner.”
“I’m dining out myself, so I must fly.” He turned to Lorraine, with a gay smile. “I say, may I come and dine with you some other time?”
“Come to the Carlton on Sunday, will you?”
Lorraine hardly knew why she made the sudden decision; she only knew perfectly well she would have to break another engagement to keep it, and that she was foolishly glad when he accepted.
“It’s all right; you needn’t ask me,” volunteered Hal, as her friend glanced at her. “I’m going motoring with Dick, and I shall insist upon staying out until ten or eleven. I always try and fill my Sundays full of fresh air. “Where are you going tonight, Baby?” she added, with a charmingly impudent smile.
“The Albert Hall, with Lady Selon”; and a twinkle shone in his eyes.