Mrs. Dale (smiling). I fancy there’s only one.
Hilda. The great, great poet? (Irresolute.) No, I don’t dare—
Mrs. Dale (with a tinge of impatience). What?
Hilda (fervently). Ask you—if I might—oh, here in this corner, where he can’t possibly notice me—stay just a moment? Just to see him come in? To see the meeting between you—the greatest novelist and the greatest poet of the age? Oh, it’s too much to ask! It’s an historic moment.
Mrs. Dale. Why, I suppose it is. I hadn’t thought of it in that light. Well (smiling), for the diary—
Hilda. Oh, thank you, thank you! I’ll be off the very instant I’ve heard him speak.
Mrs. Dale. The very instant, mind. (She rises, looks at herself in the glass, smooths her hair, sits down again, and rattles the tea-caddy.) Isn’t the room very warm?—_ (She looks over at her portrait.)_ I’ve grown stouter since that was painted—. You’ll make a fortune out of that diary, Hilda—
Hilda (modestly). Four publishers have applied to me already—
The Servant (announces). Mr. Paul Ventnor.
(Tall, nearing fifty, with an incipient stoutness buttoned into a masterly frock-coat, Ventnor drops his glass and advances vaguely, with a short-sighted stare.)
Ventnor. Mrs. Dale?
Mrs. Dale. My dear friend! This is kind. (She looks over her shoulder at Hilda, mho vanishes through the door to the left.) The papers announced your arrival, but I hardly hoped—
Ventnor (whose short-sighted stare is seen to conceal a deeper embarrassment). You hadn’t forgotten me, then?
Mrs. Dale. Delicious! Do you forget that you’re public property?
Ventnor. Forgotten, I mean, that we were old friends?
Mrs. Dale. Such old friends! May I remind you that it’s nearly twenty years since we’ve met? Or do you find cold reminiscences indigestible?
Ventnor. On the contrary, I’ve come to ask you for a dish of them—we’ll warm them up together. You’re my first visit.
Mrs. Dale. How perfect of you! So few men visit their women friends in chronological order; or at least they generally do it the other way round, beginning with the present day and working back—if there’s time—to prehistoric woman.
Ventnor. But when prehistoric woman has become historic woman—?
Mrs. Dale. Oh, it’s the reflection of my glory that has guided you here, then?
Ventnor. It’s a spirit in my feet that has led me, at the first opportunity, to the most delightful spot I know.
Mrs. Dale. Oh, the first opportunity—!
Ventnor. I might have seen you very often before; but never just in the right way.
Mrs. Dale. Is this the right way?
Ventnor. It depends on you to make it so.
Mrs. Dale. What a responsibility! What shall I do?
Ventnor. Talk to me—make me think you’re a little glad to see me; give me some tea and a cigarette; and say you’re out to everyone else.
Mrs. Dale. Is that all? (She hands him a cup of tea.) The cigarettes are at your elbow—. And do you think I shouldn’t have been glad to see you before?
Ventnor. No; I think I should have been too glad to see you.
Mrs. Dale. Dear me, what precautions! I hope you always wear goloshes when it looks like rain and never by any chance expose yourself to a draught. But I had an idea that poets courted the emotions—
Ventnor. Do novelists?
Mrs. Dale. If you ask me—on paper!
Ventnor. Just so; that’s safest. My best things about the sea have been written on shore. (He looks at her thoughtfully.) But it wouldn’t have suited us in the old days, would it?
Mrs. Dale (sighing). When we were real people!
Ventnor. Real people?
Mrs. Dale. Are you, now? I died years ago. What you see before you is a figment of the reporter’s brain—a monster manufactured out of newspaper paragraphs, with ink in its veins. A keen sense of copyright is my nearest approach to an emotion.
