"I could spend three hours every day reading Shakespeare," Rodney
remarked. "And there's music and pictures, let alone the society of
the people one likes."

"You'd be bored to death in a year's time."

"Oh, I grant you I should be bored if I did nothing. But I should
write plays."

"H'm!"

"I should write plays," he repeated. "I've written three-quarters of
one already, and I'm only waiting for a holiday to finish it. And it's
not bad--no, some of it's really rather nice."

The question arose in Denham's mind whether he should ask to see this
play, as, no doubt, he was expected to do. He looked rather stealthily
at Rodney, who was tapping the coal nervously with a poker, and
quivering almost physically, so Denham thought, with desire to talk
about this play of his, and vanity unrequited and urgent. He seemed
very much at Denham's mercy, and Denham could not help liking him,
partly on that account.

"Well, . . . will you let me see the play?" Denham asked, and Rodney
looked immediately appeased, but, nevertheless, he sat silent for a
moment, holding the poker perfectly upright in the air, regarding it
with his rather prominent eyes, and opening his lips and shutting them
again.

"Do you really care for this kind of thing?" he asked at length, in a