Paula, with an obtuseness which made Mathilda want to shake her, brushed aside the compliments she was receiving on her acting, and again attacked her uncle. ‘Now that you’ve heard it, Uncle Nat, you will help Willoughby, won’t you?’

‘If by that you mean will I give you the money to squander on a piece of what I can only call salacious balderdash, no, I won’t!’ he responded, not, however, in a loud enough voice to be overheard by the author.

Paula stared at him, as though she scarcely grasped his meaning. ‘Can’t you see – can’t you see that the part is made for me?’ she asked, with a little gasp.

‘Upon my soul!’ exploded Nathaniel. ‘I should like to know what the world is coming to when a girl of your breeding can stand there and tell me the part of a harlot is made for her!’

‘That out-of-date rubbish!’ Paula said contemptuously. ‘We are talking of Art!’

‘Oh, we are, are we?’ said Nathaniel, in a grim voice. ‘And I suppose that is your idea of Art, is it, young woman? Well, all I have to say is that it isn’t mine!’

It turned out, unfortunately for everybody else, that this was an understatement. Nathaniel had a good deal more to say, on subjects which ranged from the decadence of modern drama and the puppyishness of modem dramatists to the folly of all women in general and of his niece in particular. He added a rider to the effect that Paula’s mother would have done better to have stayed at home to look after her daughter than to spend her time gadding about marrying every Tom, Dick, and Harry she met.

It was now felt by all who were privileged to hear these remarks that it would be advisable to get Roydon out of the way until Nathaniel’s wrath had had time to cool. Mathilda very nobly put herself forward, and told Roydon that she had been immensely interested in Wormwood, and would like to have a talk with him about it. Roydon, who, besides being rather impressed by Mathilda, was naturally eager to talk about his play, allowed himself to be manoeuvred out of the room just as Joseph joined the stricken group about his brother, and, with ill-timed jocosity, smote him lightly on the back, saying: ‘Well, well, Nat, we’re a couple of old-stagers, eh? A crude, sometimes a violent piece of work. Yet not without merit, I think. What do you say?’

Nathaniel at once became a cripple. He said: ‘My lumbago! Damn you, don’t do that!’ and tottered to a chair, one hand to the small of his back and his manly form bent with suffering.

‘Why, I thought it was all right again!’ said Valerie innocently.

Nathaniel, who had closed his eyes, opened them to cast a baleful glance in her direction, and replied in the voice of one whose days were attended by anguish bravely borne: ‘The least touch brings it on!’