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“Don’t you believe it,” said the Critic, “That was only improvisatore–that’s no sample.”

“Ho, ho! I’ll bet you anything that the manuscript is up in your trunk, and that you have been committing it to memory ever since this idea was proposed,” said the Doctor, still laughing.

“No, that I deny,” replied the Critic, “but as I am no poseur, I will own that I wrote it years ago, and rewrote it so often that I never could forget it. I’ll confess more than that, the story has been ‘declined with thanks’ by every decent magazine in the States and in England. Now perhaps some one will tell me why.”

“I don’t know the answer,” said the Youngster, seriously, “unless it is ‘why not?'”

“I shouldn’t wonder if it were sentimental twaddle,” sighed the Journalist, “but I don’t know.”

“I noticed,” expostulated the Critic, “that you all listened, enthralled.”

“Oh,” replied the Doctor, “that was a tribute to your personal charm. You did it very well.”

“Exactly,” said the Critic, “if editors would let me read them my stories, I could sell them like hot cakes. I never believed that Homer would have lived as long as he has, if he had not made the reputation of his tales by singing them centuries before any one tried to read them. Now no one dares to say they bore him. The reading public, and the editors who cater to it, are just like some stupid theatrical managers I know of, who will never let an author read a play to them for fear that he may give the play some charm that the fool theatrical man might not have felt from mere type-written words on white or yellow paper. By Jove, I know the case of a manager who once bought the option on a foreign play from a scenario provided by a clever friend of mine–and paid a stiff price for it, too, and when he got the manuscript wrote to the chap who did the scenario–‘Play dashety-dashed rot. If it had been as good as your scenario, it would have gone.’ And, what is more, he sacrificed the tidy five thousand he had paid, and let his option slide. Now, when the fellow who did the scenario wrote: ‘If you found anything in the scenario that you did not discover in the play, it is because I gave you the effect it would have behind the footlights, which you have not the imagination to see in the printed words,’ the Manager only replied ‘You are a nice chap. I like you very much, but you are a blanketty-blanketty fool.'”

“Which was right?” asked the Journalist.

“The scenario man.”

“How do you know?”

“How do I know? Why simply because the play was produced later–ran five years, and drew a couple of million dollars. That’s how I know.”

“By cricky,” exclaimed the Youngster, “I believe he thinks his story could earn a million if it had a chance.”

“I don’t say ‘no,'” said the Critic, yawning, “but it will never get a chance. I burned the manuscript this morning, and now being delivered of it, I have no more interest in it than a sparrow has in her last year’s offspring.”

“The trouble with you is that you haven’t any patience, any staying power. That ought to have been a three volume novel. We would have heard all about their first meeting, their first love, their separation, his marriage, her debuts, etc., etc.,” declared the Journalist.

“Oh, thunder,” said the Doctor. “I think there was quite enough of it. Don’t throw anything at me–I liked it–I liked it! Only I’m sorry she died.”

“So am I,” said the Critic. “That really hurt me.”

“Because,” said the Doctor, shying away toward the door, “I should have liked to know if the child turned out to be a genius. That kind do sometimes,” and he disappeared into the doorway.

“Anyhow,” said the Critic, “I am going to wear laurels until some one tells a better–and I’d like to know why the Journalist looks so pensively thoughtful?”

“I am trying to recall who she was–Margaret Dillon.”

“Don’t fret–she may be a ‘poor thing,’ but she is all ‘mine own’–a genuine creation, Mr. Journalist. I am no reporter.”

“Ah? Then you are more of a sentimentalist than I even dared to dream.”

“Don’t deny it,” said the Critic, as he rose and yawned. “So I am going to bed to sleep on my laurels while I may. Good night.”

“Well,” called the Sculptor after him, as he sauntered away, “as one of our mutual friends used to say ‘The Indian Summer of Passion scorches.'”

“But, alas!” added the other, “it does not always kill.”

“Witness–” began the Journalist, but the Critic cut him short.

“As you love me–not that famous list of yours including so many of the actresses we all know. I can’t bear THAT to-night. After all the French have a better phrase for it–‘La Crise de quarante ans.'”

The Nurse and Divorcee had been very quiet, but here they locked hands, and the former remarked that they prepared to withdraw:

“That is our cue to disappear–and you, too, Youngster. These men are far too wise.”

So we of the discussed sex made a circle with our clasped hand about the Youngster and danced him into the house. The last I saw of the garden that night, as I looked out of my window toward the northeast, with “Namur” beating in my head, the five men had their heads still together, but whether “the other sex” was getting scientifically torn to bits, or they, too, had Namur in their minds I never knew.