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Mr Prosser looked keenly at him.

‘Why, I’ve seen you before,’ he said. ‘You’re the young turnip-headed scallywag at the farm.’

‘That’s right,’ said Owen.

‘I’ve been wanting to meet you again. I thought the whole thing over, and it struck me,’ said Mr Prosser, handsomely, ‘that I may have seemed a little abrupt at our last meeting.’

‘No, no.’

‘The fact is, I was in the middle of an infernally difficult passage of my book that morning, and when you began–‘

‘It was my fault entirely. I quite understand.’

Mr Prosser produced a card-case.

‘We must see more of each other,’ he said. ‘Come and have a bit of dinner some night. Come tonight.’

‘I’m very sorry. I have to go to the theatre tonight.’

‘Then come and have a bit of supper afterwards. Excellent. Meet me at the Savoy at eleven-fifteen. I’m glad I didn’t hit you with that loaf. Abruptness has been my failing through life. My father was just the same. Eleven-fifteen at the Savoy, then.’

The manager, who had been listening with some restlessness to the conversation, now intervened. He was a man with a sense of fitness of things, and he objected to having his private room made the scene of what appeared to be a reunion of old college chums. He hinted as much.

‘Ha! Prrumph!’ he observed, disapprovingly. ‘Er–Mr Bentley, that is all. You may return to your work–ah’mmm! Kindly be more careful another time in stamping the letters.’

‘Yes, by Jove,’ said Mr Prosser, suddenly reminded of his wrongs, ‘that’s right. Exercise a little ordinary care, you ivory-skulled young son of a gun. Do you think Miss Delane is made of twopences? Keep an eye on him,’ he urged the manager. ‘These young fellows nowadays want someone standing over them with a knout all the time. Be more careful another time, young man. Eleven-fifteen, remember. Make a note of it, or you’ll go forgetting that.’

* * * * *

The seat Audrey had bought for him at the Piccadilly Theatre proved to be in the centre of the sixth row of stalls–practically a death-trap. Whatever his sufferings might be, escape was impossible. He was securely wedged in.

The cheaper parts of the house were sparsely occupied, but the stalls were full. Owen, disapproving of the whole business, refused to buy a programme, and settled himself in his seat prepared for the worst. He had a vivid recollection of White Roses, the novel, and he did not anticipate any keen enjoyment from it in its dramatized form. He had long ceased to be a, member of that large public for which Miss Edith Butler catered. The sentimental adventures of governesses in ducal houses–the heroine of White Roses was a governess–no longer contented his soul.

There is always a curiously dream-like atmosphere about a play founded on a book. One seems to have seen it all before. During the whole of the first act Owen attributed to this his feeling of familiarity with what was going on on the stage. At the beginning of the second act he found himself anticipating events. But it was not till the third act that the truth sank in.

The third was the only act in which, in his dramatization, he had taken any real liberties with the text of the novel. But in this act he had introduced a character who did not appear in the novel–a creature of his own imagination. And now, with bulging eyes, he observed this creature emerge from the wings, and heard him utter lines which he now clearly remembered having written.

Audrey had been right! Serpent Edith Butler had stolen his play.

His mind, during the remainder of the play, was active. By the time the final curtain fell and he passed out into the open air he had perceived some of the difficulties of the case. To prove oneself the author of an original play is hard, but not impossible. Friends to whom one had sketched the plot may come forward as witnesses. One may have preserved rough notes. But a dramatization of a novel is another matter. All dramatizations of any given novel must necessarily be very much alike.