courteous gesture than the young men from the universities; he bowed
more deferentially to an interlocutor than is customary outside
Court circles; but they were all the tricks of good breeding. More
than one girl asked if he were of foreign extraction. He remembered
Rowlatt's question of years ago, and, as then, he felt curiously
pleased. He confessed to an exotic strain: to Italian origin. Italy
was romantic. When he obtained a line part and he appeared on the
bill, he took the opportunity of changing a name linked with
unpleasant associations which he did not regard as his own.
Kegworthy was cast into the limbo of common things, and he became
Paul Savelli. But this was later.

He made friends at the theatre. Some of the women, by petting and
flattery, did their best to spoil him; but Paul was too ambitious,
too much absorbed in his dream of greatness and his dilettante
literary and musical pursuits, too much yet of a boy to be greatly
affected. What he prized far more highly than feminine blandishments
was the new comradeship with his own sex. Instinctively he sought
them, as a sick dog seeks grass, unconsciously feeling the need of
them in his mental and moral development. Besides, the attitude of
the women reminded him of that of the women painters in his younger
days. He had no intention of playing the pet monkey again. His
masculinity revolted. The young barbarian clamoured. A hard day on
the river he found much more to his taste than sporting in the shade
of a Kensington flat over tea and sandwiches with no matter how
sentimental an Amaryllis. Jane, who had seen the performance, though
not from a box, a couple of upper-circle seats being all that Paul
could obtain from the acting-manager, and had been vastly impressed
by Paul's dominating position in the stage fairy-world, said to him,
with a sniff that choked a sigh: "Now that you've got all those