She would not disclose anything that would interest him so much. Or would it? As soon as the doubt prevailed she wished she had told him. Fortunately, it would be easy to let him know, since there were only three Dublin hotels at which he would be likely to stay.

Neither could Paul, on the tram, stop thinking of her, and for a reason that flattered them both: he had already diagnosed what he called a histrionic personality. Not, of course, that it was specially rare; many types in all walks of life were apt to be so equipped (auctioneers, athletes, and the clergy, for instance); besides which, one often met the unlikeliest people who made their personal or professional world a stage and their own lives a continuous play. To be an actor, a real actor, much more was needed than any kind of personality; nevertheless, to have the right kind was a good start.

By midnight of that August evening he was already blaming himself for the incredible stupidity of not having enquired even the girl’s name—how on earth could he trace her, even if he should want to? For it might well become a whim to do so, as casual as her own voice answering him about her leg. “‘Tis broke.” It was the way he would have liked her to say it if it had been a line in a play.

By that same late evening Carey was writing three identical notes addressed to Mr. Paul Saffron at the Gresham, the Shelbourne, and the Hibernian hotels. She wrote that since he had stressed so much his interest in the theatre, doubtless he would like to visit the famous one in Dublin, so she would leave a couple of tickets for next week’s opening night for him to pick up at the box office in Middle Abbey Street. She signed herself ‘Carey Arundel’, but she still left it to him to discover, if and when he cared to, WHAT she was.

* * * * *

He was not, as it happened, staying at any of the three hotels, but at a private house called Venton League, the home of a rich brewer whom he had met at a party in London, and who had promptly extended the invitation on learning of his Irish visit. Brewing, one of the more historic trades, has almost escaped the stigma of being a trade at all, and its distinguished dynasties rank high and are considerably international; Michael Rowden, in his late fifties, was a fine fleur of the culture, a Rothschild of his line, with family connections well scattered across England, Europe, and America, and financial interlockings from Milwaukee to Dortmund. Had he been a younger son he might have made an excellent diplomat, bishop, or even cardinal (for he was both a Catholic and a bachelor); as it was, he sold beer (with an inverted snobbery that made him thus describe his business), drank wine, collected French impressionist paintings, and found ample time to cultivate the habits of a gentleman-savant. Temperament and wealth insulated him from most of the troubles of life, even from the Irish ‘troubles’, for neither side wished to drive into exile a man so eminently taxable. The hotheads had once put Venton League on their list of large houses to be burned, but Rowden had let it be known that he didn’t much care; its destruction would spare him the eventual problem of whether to demolish it for villa development or bequeath it to Holy Church for some institutional use. And there really was a sense in which he did not care; he would be quite happy, if he had to be, in London or Palm Beach or Capri. Yet Venton League did, for all that, give him a special sort of satisfaction; it was the house of his ancestors, as far back as four generations, and family pride, well tempered with cynicism about it, was strong in him. Moreover, since this was Dublin and not any other place in the world, there was a uniqueness in the kind of life he could live there—an eighteenth-century quality marvellously and miraculously preserved into the fabric of the twentieth. Leisurely elegance, half urban and half arcadian, part scholarly, part merely sophisticated, gave a ripeness even to anachronism; the kitchens were monstrous and old-fashioned, yet the bathrooms combined the luxuries of ancient Rome and modern America; the library windows offered a view of formal gardens backgrounded by green mountains, yet at the end of the half-mile carriage drive, and just outside the lodge gates, the threepenny tram started for the Pillar in O’Connell Street. All this suited him and immensely intrigued his constant succession of house guests. For as a suave Maecenas to young men of promise he performed a function all the more admirable because he took so much pleasure in it; at Venton League there was always apt to be some visiting painter, writer, musician, or even tennis champion, and the language at dinner was almost as often French or Italian as English. Rowden had not needed much acquaintance with Paul at that London party to decide that he would make an apt recruit, both culturally and racially, to the Venton League ménage—a young American with literary and theatrical connections… good… he could stay as long as he liked.

Paul, compared with all this, was brash; he had met American millionaires, and even American millionaire brewers, but they had not been in the least like Rowden. To that extent he was secretly baffled, but he gave Rowden the usual treatment of brilliant talk and affable self-display, hopeful though by no means sure that the man was being impressed. One evening wine unleashed his tongue to such vainglory that Rowden smiled and put his hand under the youth’s arm as they walked into the library for coffee and cognac; Paul by that time was in the midst of a survey of all the grandiose theatrical ideas that had ever effervesced in his mind, one of which he had just thought of suddenly at the dining-table and which lifted him to a peak of excitement the more he enlarged upon it—Othello with an all-Negro cast, except for Othello himself, who should be white. Into a rare and breathless silence Rowden then managed to interject: “My dear young man, I admire your enthusiasms and I think it quite possible you are almost as wonderful as you say. But tell me… how are you going to LIVE in this world?”

“LIVE?”

“Yes. Make a living.”

“You mean money? Oh, I manage. I pick up a bit from journalism, and then I have a travelling fellowship—rather a juicy one—it’s supposed to enable me to do ‘creative writing’, whatever that means, but there’s no problem, because if the worst comes to the worst I’ll bundle some of my articles together and call ‘em creative—who the hell can swear they aren’t?”

“You, of course, KNOW that they aren’t.”

“Oh, sure. I’m not really a writer. I’ve got creativeness in me, but it’s not that kind… But don’t worry—I’ll get by. The fellowship’s a racket, but it helps me around—they might renew it for another year. And sometimes I meet rich people who save me hotel bills.”

Rowden was at first antagonized by what he took to be boorishness; but then, beneath it, he caught other notes—frustration, ambition, cool self-criticism, and a sort of celestial you-be-damnedness. On the whole he was beginning to like Paul very much indeed.

Paul added, with a grin: “I’m only kidding. If you think I’d stay here just for that you don’t know me.