[Pg 38]

“Flatterer!” said Mrs. Ilkington archly. “I’m not surprised,” she pursued. “I might have known you’d be aboard this vessel.”

“You must be a prophetess of sorts, then,” he said, smiling. “I didn’t know I was going to sail, myself, till late yesterday afternoon.”

“Deceiver,” commented the lady calmly. “Why can’t you men ever be candid?”

Surprise merged into some annoyance. “What do you mean?” he asked bluntly.

“Oh, but two can play at that game,” she assured him spiritedly. “If you won’t be open with me, why should I tell all I know?”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re driving at, Mrs. Ilkington.”

“Would it improve your understanding”—she threatened him gaily with a gem-encrusted forefinger—“if I were to tell you I met a certain person in Paris last week, who talked to me about you?”

“It would not,” said he stiffly. “Who—?”

“Oh, well, if you won’t be frank!” Mrs. Ilkington’s manner implied that he was a bold, bad butterfly,[Pg 39] but that she had his entomological number, none the less. “Tell me,” she changed the subject abruptly, “how goes the great play?”

[Pg 39]

“Three acts are written,” he said in weariness of spirit, “the fourth—”

“But I thought you weren’t to return to America until it was quite finished?”

“Who told you that, please?”

“Never mind, sir! How about the fourth act?”

“I mean to write it en voyage,” said he, perplexed. From whom could this woman possibly have learned so much that was intimate to himself?

“You have it all mapped out, then?” she persisted.

“Oh, yes; it only needs to be put on paper.”

“R’ally, then, it’s true—isn’t it—that the writing is the least part of play construction?”

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