"'A Bunch of Pansies,' that's charming," said Lorimer; "I should like to have a title like that for my new play, as simple" ...
"Oh, by-the-bye, how about your play, is it getting on?"
"It's finished, my dear fellow. I have the manuscript with me. I have to read it to the company at the Queen's Theatre to-day at four o'clock."
"Are you pleased with it?"
"My dear friend, when a man has the artistic temperament, his work never realises his ideal—but, thank goodness, when I have finished a play, I think of nothing but—the next one."
"You are right—but, still, with your experience—you have been writing plays for years."
"I wrote my first play when I was seventeen," said Lorimer, drawing himself up in a comic manner.
"When you were seventeen?" exclaimed Dora.
"Yes! a melodrama, and what a melodrama it was!—blood-curdling, weird, terrible, human, fiendish. I portrayed crime, perfidy and lying triumphing for a while, but overtaken in the long-run by fatal chastisement."
"And was the piece produced?" interrupted Dora.