drama. No one will understand the drift of it, but everyone
will go back to their homes with a vague feeling of
dissatisfaction with their lives and surroundings. Then they
will put up new wall-papers and forget."

"But how about those that have oak panelling all over the
house?" said the Other.

"They can always put down new stair-carpets," pursued
Reginald, "and, anyhow, I'm not responsible for the audience
having a happy ending. The play would be quite sufficient
strain on one's energies. I should get a bishop to say it
was immoral and beautiful--no dramatist has thought of that
before, and everyone would come to condemn the bishop, and
they would stay on out of sheer nervousness. After all, it
requires a great deal of moral courage to leave in a marked
manner in the middle of the second act, when your carriage
isn't ordered till twelve. And it would commence with wolves
worrying something on a lonely waste--you wouldn't see them,
of course; but you would hear them snarling and scrunching,
and I should arrange to have a wolfy fragrance suggested
across the footlights. It would look so well on the
programmes, 'Wolves in the first act, by Jamrach.' And old
Lady Whortleberry, who never misses a first night, would
scream. She's always been nervous since she lost her first
husband. He died quite abruptly while watching a county
cricket match; two and a half inches of rain had fallen for
seven runs, and it was supposed that the excitement killed
him. Anyhow, it gave her quite a shock; it was the first
husband she'd lost, you know, and now she always screams if