"Ah, wait to see where they end!"

"I mean they'll now be of a totally different order," Wayworth
explained. "It seems to me there can be nothing in the world more
difficult than to write a play that will stand an all-round test, and
that in comparison with them the complications that spring up at this
point are of an altogether smaller kind."

"Yes, they're not inspiring," said Mrs. Alsager; "they're
discouraging, because they're vulgar. The other problem, the working
out of the thing itself, is pure art."

"How well you understand everything!" The young man had got up,
nervously, and was leaning against the chimney-piece with his back to
the fire and his arms folded. The roll of his copy, in his fist, was
squeezed into the hollow of one of them. He looked down at Mrs.
Alsager, smiling gratefully, and she answered him with a smile from
eyes still charmed and suffused. "Yes, the vulgarity will begin
now," he presently added.

"You'll suffer dreadfully."

"I shall suffer in a good cause."

"Yes, giving THAT to the world! You must leave it with me, I must
read it over and over," Mrs. Alsager pleaded, rising to come nearer
and draw the copy, in its cover of greenish-grey paper, which had a
generic identity now to him, out of his grasp. "Who in the world
will do it?--who in the world CAN?" she went on, close to him,