“Well,” said Edward Henry, not perhaps unjustifiably, “this really is a bit thick!  Here I’ve got an option on a plot of land for building a theatre, and somebody else has taken it to put up a church!”

He ventured inside the hoarding, and addressing the elegant young man asked: 

“You got anything to do with this, mister?”

“Well,” said the young man, smiling humorously, “I’m the architect.  It’s true that nobody ever pays any attention to an architect in these days.”

“Oh!  You’re Mr. Alloyd?”

“I am.”

Mr. Alloyd had black hair, intensely black, changeful eyes, and the expressive mouth of an actor.

“I thought they were going to build a theatre here,” said Edward Henry.

“I wish they had been!” said Mr. Alloyd.  “I’d just like to design a theatre!  But of course I shall never get the chance.”

“Why not?”

“I know I shan’t,” Mr. Alloyd insisted with gloomy disgust.  “Only obtained this job by sheer accident! ...  You got any ideas about theatres?”

“Well, I have,” said Edward Henry.

Mr. Alloyd turned on him with a sardonic and half-benevolent gleam.

“And what are your ideas about theatres?”

“Well,” said Edward Henry, “I should like to meet an architect who had thoroughly got it into his head that when people pay for seats to see a play they want to be able to see it, and not just get a look at it now and then over other people’s heads and round corners of boxes and things.  In most theatres that I’ve been in the architects seemed to think that iron pillars and wooden heads are transparent.  Either that, or the architects were rascals!  Same with hearing!  The pit costs half-a-crown, and you don’t pay half-a-crown to hear glasses rattled in a bar or motor-omnibuses rushing down the street.  I was never yet in a London theatre where the architect had really understood that what the people in the pit wanted to hear was the play and nothing but the play.”

“You’re rather hard on us,” said Mr. Alloyd.

“Not so hard as you are on us!” said Edward Henry.  “And then draughts!  I suppose you think a draught on the back of the neck is good for us!...  But of course you’ll say all this has nothing to do with architecture!”

“Oh, no, I shan’t!  Oh, no, I shan’t!” exclaimed Mr. Alloyd.  “I quite agree with you!”

“You do?”

“Certainly.  You seem to be interested in theatres?”

“I am a bit.”

“You come from the north?”

“No, I don’t,” said Edward Henry.  Mr. Alloyd had no right to be aware that he was not a Londoner.

“I beg your pardon.”

“I come from the Midlands.”

“Oh!...  Have you seen the Russian Ballet?”

Edward Henry had not—­nor heard of it.  “Why?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Mr. Alloyd.  “Only I saw it the night before last in Paris.  You never saw such dancing.  It’s enchanted—­enchanted!  The most lovely thing I ever saw in my life.  I couldn’t sleep for it.  Not that I ever sleep very well!—­I merely thought, as you were interested in theatres—­and Midland people are so enterprising!...  Have a cigarette?”