'Any day you please. To-morrow. The next day. I can begin at once.'

Then came a small party of men—journalists and critics—captured by Dick Stephenson at the club, and bribed to come by the promise of an introduction to the beautiful Miss Armorel Rosevean. I do not think they expected much joy from the amateur reading of an unacted piece. It is melancholy, indeed, to consider that though the preliminary and tentative performance of the unacted play—long prayed for—has been at last established, the promised appearance of the great dramatist has not yet come off—nay, the theatrical critic weeps, swears, and growls at the mention of a matinée, and when he is requested to attend one passes it on if he can to his younger brother in the calling. And yet such great treasures were expected of the matinée! However, they agreed to come and listen on this occasion. It shall be put down to their credit as a Samaritan deed.

'Dick Stephenson,' said Armorel, with an assumption of old friendship which filled him with pride, 'I hope you are come here to-night in a really serious frame of mind—you and your friends.'

'We are always serious.'

'I mean that you are going to hear an ambitious piece of work. All I ask of you is to listen seriously, and to remember that it is really the work of a man who aims at the very highest.'

'Will he reach the very highest?'

'I do not know. But I am quite certain that there are very few artists, in any branch, who dare to aim high. Listen, and try to understand what the poet has attempted—what has been in his mind. Promise me this.'

'Certainly, I will promise you so much.'

'Thank you. It was for this that I asked you to-night. And see—here is your old friend Roland Lee.' The two young men shook hands rather sheepishly—the one because he had been an Ass—a long-eared Ass; and the other, because he was not guiltless of letting his friend slip out of his hands without a remonstrance and so away into paths unknown. 'I hear,' said Armorel, with her beautiful seriousness, 'that you two have suffered yourselves to drift apart of late. I hope that will be all over now. Oh! you must never give up the early friendships. Have you seen Roland's new picture? He has lent it to me for this evening. Come and look at it.'

'Why,' cried one of the men, 'it is an unfinished picture of Alec Feilding's!'