“This is outrageous,” the visitor said, but with a note of something like despair in his voice. “I formally relinquish the case. You will take this as final.” There was a pause, during which Paul attempted, without success, to drag Cedric away. “I won’t accept it,” Sir Henry said at last, “Come, now, Withers, keep your temper. You ought to understand. I’ve a great deal to try me. A great deal. Bear with an old fellow’s tantrums, won’t you? You shan’t regret it. See here, now. Shut that door and listen to me.” Without turning, the visitor slowly shut the door.

“And now,” Cedric whispered, “he’ll tell poor Dr. Withers he’s going to be remembered in the Will.”

“Come on, for God’s sake,” said Paul, and they made their way to the little theatre.

Half an hour later Troy had set up her easel, stretched her canvas, and prepared paper and boards for preliminary studies. The theatre was a complete little affair with a deepish stage. The Macbeth backcloth was simple and brilliantly conceived. The scenic painter had carried out Troy’s original sketch very well indeed. Before it stood three-dimensional monolithic forms that composed well and broke across the cloth in the right places. She saw where she would place her figure. There would be no attempt to present the background in terms of actuality. It would be frankly a stage set. “A dangling rope would come rather nicely,” she thought, “but I suppose they wouldn’t like that. If only he’ll stand!”

Cedric and Paul now began to show her what could be done with the lights. Troy was enjoying herself. She liked the smell of canvas and glue and the feeling that this was a place where people worked. In the little theatre even Cedric improved. He was knowledgeable and quickly responsive to her suggestions, checking Paul’s desire to flood the set with a startling display of lighting and getting him to stand in position while he himself focussed a single spot. “We must find the backcloth discreetly,” he cried. “Try the ground row.” And presently a luminous glow appeared, delighting Troy.

“But how are you going to see?” cried Cedric distractedly. “Oh, lawks! How are you going to see?”

“I can bring down a standard spot on an extension,” Paul offered. “Or we could uncover a window.”

Cedric gazed in an agony of inquiry at Troy. “But the window light would infiltrate,” he said. “Or wouldn’t it?”

“We could try.”

At last by an ingenious arrangement of screens Troy was able to get daylight on her canvas and a fair view of the stage.

The clock — it was, of course, known as the Great Clock — in the central tower struck eleven. A door somewhere backstage opened and shut, and dead on his cue Sir Henry, in the character of Macbeth, walked onto the lighted set.

“Golly!” Troy whispered. “Oh, Golly!”

“Devastatingly fancy dress,” said Cedric in her ear, “but in its ridiculous way rather exciting. Or not? Too fancy?”

“It’s not too fancy for me,” Troy said roundly, and walked down the aisle to greet her sitter.

ii

At midday Troy drove her fingers through her hair, propped a large charcoal drawing against the front of the stage and backed away from it down the aisle. Sir Henry took off his helmet, groaned a little, and moved cautiously to a chair in the wings.

“I suppose you want to stop,” said Troy absently, biting her thumb and peering at her drawing.

“One grows a trifle stiff,” he replied. She then noticed that he was looking more than a trifle tired. He had made up for her sitting, painting heavy shadows round his eyes and staining his moustache and the tuft on his chin with water-dye. To this he had added long strands of crepe hair. But beneath the greasepaint and hair his face sagged a little and his head drooped.

“I must let you go,” said Troy. “I hope I haven’t been too exacting. One forgets.”

“One also remembers,” said Sir Henry. “I have been remembering my lines. I played the part first in 1904.”

Troy looked up quickly, suddenly liking him.

“It’s a wonderful rôle,” he said. “Wonderful.”

“I was very much moved by it when I saw you five years ago.”

“I’ve played it six times and always to enormous business. It hasn’t been an unlucky piece for me.”

“I’ve heard about the Macbeth superstition. One mustn’t quote from the play, must one?” Troy made a sudden pounce at her drawing and wiped her thumb down a too dominant line. “Do you believe it’s unlucky!” she asked vaguely.

“It has been for other actors,” he said, quite seriously. “There’s always a heavy feeling offstage during performance. People are nervy.”

“Isn’t that perhaps because they remember the superstition?”

“It’s there,” he said. “You can’t escape the feeling. But the piece has never been unlucky for me.” His voice, which had sounded tired, lifted again. “If it were otherwise, should I have chosen this rôle for my portrait? Assuredly not. And now,” he said with a return of his arch and over-gallant manner, “am I to be allowed a peep before I go?”

Troy was not very keen for him to have his peep, but she took the drawing a little way down the aisle and turned it towards him. “I’m afraid it won’t explain itself,” she said, “It’s merely a sort of plot of what I hope to do.”

“Ah, yes!” He put his hand in his tunic and drew out a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez and there, in a moment, was Macbeth, with glasses perched on his nose, staring solemnly at his own portrait. “Such a clever lady,” he said. “Very clever!” Troy put the drawing away and he got up slowly. “Off, ye lendings!” he said. “I must change.” He adjusted his cloak with a practised hand, drew himself up, and, moving into the spot-light, pointed his dirk at the great naked canvas. His voice, as though husbanded for this one flourish, boomed through the empty theatre.

“God’s benison go with you!” said Troy, luckily remembering the line. He crossed himself, chuckled and strode off between the monoliths to the door behind the stage. It slammed and Troy was alone.

She had made up her mind to start at once with the laying out of her subject on the big canvas. There would be no more preliminary studies. Time pressed and she knew now what she wanted. There is no other moment, she thought, to compare with this, when you face the tautly stretched surface and raise your hand to make the first touch upon it. And, drawing in her breath, she swept her charcoal across the canvas. It gave a faint drum-like note of response. “We’re off,” thought Troy.

Fifty minutes went by and a rhythm of line and mass grew under her hand. Back and forward she walked, making sharp accents with the end of her charcoal or sweeping it flat across the grain of the canvas. All that was Troy was now poured into her thin blackened hand. At last she stood motionless, ten paces back from her work, and, after an interval, lit a cigarette, took up her duster and began to flick her drawing. Showers of charcoal fell down the surface.

“Don’t you like it?” asked a sharp voice.

Troy jumped galvanically and turned. The little girl she had seen fighting on the terrace stood in the aisle, her hands jammed in the pockets of her pinafore and her feet planted apart.

“Where did you come from?” Troy demanded.

“Through the end door. I came quietly because I’m not allowed. Why are you rubbing it out? Don’t you like it?”

“I’m not rubbing it out. It’s still there.” And indeed the ghost of her drawing remained. “You take the surplus charcoal off,” she said curtly. “Otherwise it messes the paints.”

“Is it going to be Noddy dressed up funny?”

Troy started at this use of a name she had imagined to be Miss Orrincourt’s prerogative and invention.