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you,” Peregrine said. “That was a great help to me. It was well read.”
    He looked round the table. Destiny Meade’s enormous black eyes were fixed upon him with the determined adulation of some mixed-up and sexy mediaeval saint. This meant, as he knew, nothing. Catching his eye, she raised her fingers to her lips and then in slow motion extended them to him.
    “Darling Perry,” she murmured in her celebrated hoarse voice, “what can we say? It’s all too much. Too much.” She made an appealing helpless little gesture to the company at large. They responded with suitable if ambiguous noises.
    “My dear Peregrine,” Marcus Knight said (and Peregrine thought: “His voice is like no other actor’s”), “I like it. I see great possibilities. I saw them as soon as I read the play. Naturally, that was why I accepted the role. My opinion, I promise you, is unchanged. I look forward with interest to creating this part.” Royalty could not have been more gracious.
    “I’m so glad, Marco,” Peregrine said.
    Trevor Vere, whose age, professionally, was eleven, winked abominably across the table at Miss Emily Dunne, who disregarded him. She did not try to catch Peregrine’s eye and seemed to be disregardful of her companions. He thought that perhaps she really had been moved.
    W. Hartly Grove leaned back in his chair with some elegance. His fingers tapped the typescript. His knuckles, Peregrine absently noted, were like those of a Regency prizefighter. His eyebrows were raised and a faint smile hung about his mouth. He was a blond man, very comely, with light blue eyes, set far apart, and an indefinable expression of impertinence. “I think it’s fabulous,” he said. “And I like my Mr. W.H.”
    Gertrude Bracey, patting her hair and settling her shoulders, said: “I
am
right, aren’t I, Perry? Ann Hathaway
shouldn’t
be played unsympathetically. I mean: definitely
not
a bitch?”
    Peregrine thought: “Trouble with this one: I foresee trouble.”
    He said cautiously: “She’s had a raw deal, of course.”
    Charles Random said: “I wonder what Joan Hart did with the gloves?” and gave Peregrine a shock.
    “But there weren’t any gloves,
really
,” Destiny Meade said, “were there, darling? Or were there? Is it historical?”
    “No, no, love,” Charles Random said. “I was talking inside the play. Or out of wishful thinking. I’m sorry.”
    Marcus Knight gave him a look that said it was not usual for secondary parts to offer gratuitous observations round the conference table. Random, who was a very pale young man, reddened. He was to play Dr. Hall in the first act
    “I see,” Destiny said. “So, I mean there weren’t
really
any gloves? In Stratford or anywhere real?”
    Peregrine looked at her and marvelled. She was lovely beyond compare and as simple as a sheep. The planes of her face might have been carved by an angel. Her eyes were wells of beauty. Her mouth, when it broke into a smile, would turn a man’s heart over and, although she was possessed of more than her fair share of commonsense, professional cunning and instinctive technique, her brain took one idea at a time and reduced each to the comprehension level of a baby. If she were to walk out on any given stage and stand in the least advantageous place on it in a contemptible lack of light and with nothing to say, she would draw all eyes. At this very moment, fully aware of her basic foolishness, Marcus Knight, W. Hardy Grove and, Peregrine observed with dismay, Jeremy Jones, all stared at her with the solemn awareness that was her habitual tribute, while Gertrude Bracey looked at her with something very like impotent fury.
    The moment had come when Peregrine must launch himself into one of those pre-production pep-talks upon which a company sets a certain amount of store. More, however, was expected of him, now, than the usual helping of “We’re all going to love this, so let’s get cracking” sort of thing. For once he felt a