Gay Gainsford was not good enough. It was not only that she didn’t resemble Poole closely; her performance was too anxious, too careful a reproduction of mannerisms without a flame to light them. Martyn burnt in her shadowy corner. The transparent covering in which, like a sea-creature, she had spent her twenty-four hours’ respite, now shrivelled away and she was exposed to the inexorable hunger of an unsatisfied player.

She didn’t see Bennington until he put his hand on her arm as the curtain came down, and he startled her so much that she cried out and backed away from him.

‘So you think you could do it, dear, do you?’ he said.

Martyn stammered: ‘I’m sorry. Miss Hamilton will want me,’ and dodged past him towards the improvised dressing-room. He followed and with a conventionally showy movement, barred her entrance.

‘Wait a minute, wait a minute,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

She stood there, afraid of him, conscious of his smell of greasepaint and alcohol and thinking him a ridiculous as well as an alarming person.

‘I’m so angry,’ he said conversationally, ‘just literally so angry that I’m afraid you’re going to find me quite a difficult man. And now we’ve got that ironed out perhaps you’ll tell me who the bloody hell you are.’

‘You know who I am,’ Martyn said desperately. ‘Please let me go in.’

‘M’wife’s dresser?’

He took her chin in his hand and twisted her face to the light. Poole came round the back of the set. Martyn thought: ‘He’ll be sick of the sight of me. Always getting myself into stupid little scenes.’ Bennington’s hand felt wet and hot round her chin.

‘M’wife’s dresser,’ he repeated. ‘And m’wife’s lover’s little by-blow. That the story?’

The edge of Poole’s hand dropped on his arm. ‘In you go,’ he said to Martyn, and twisted Bennington away from the door. Martyn slipped through and he shut it behind her. She heard him say: ‘You’re an offensive fellow in your cups, Ben. We’ll have this out after rehearsal. Get along and change for the third act.’

There was a moment’s pause. The door opened and he looked in.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Perfectly, thank you,’ Martyn said and in an agony of embarrassment added, ‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance, sir.’

‘Oh, don’t be an ass,’ he said with great ill-humour. The next moment he had gone.

Miss Hamilton, looking desperately worried, came in to change for the third act.