“Look here, then,” Manning explained. “Cut out all that highly-strung, neurotic bosh and make her a simple, loving creature.”
“That’s it! With a vein of sunshiny humour.” And Eliphalet leant back and smiled.
“But how am I to adjust the quick, ill-considered actions of Pauline, as I’ve conceived her, to the type of character you suggest?”
“That is for you to decide, Mr. Lennard. We are here simply to reproduce your thoughts—not to inspire them. All I ask is that you should retain the present spirit of the play.”
The poor author looked utterly bewildered, but before he had recovered his powers of speech in came Manning with a bombshell.
“And now,” he detonated, “comes the question of Comic Relief.”
“Ah!” said Eliphalet. “I had quite forgotten the Comic Relief.”
Theodore Lennard essayed an epigram.
“I have seldom found it comic,” he said, “and never a relief.”
Both his hearers frowned.