"You don't really want me to stick in this paragraph from High Life?" she would protest.
"Which one is that?"
"Why, this ridiculous announcement that you've decided to live on the upper slopes of the Andes for the next few months in order to gather material for a tragedy about the Incas."
"Oh, I don't know. It's rather amusing, I think," John would insist, apologetically. Then, rather lamely, he would add, "You see, I subscribe."
Miss Hamilton, with a sigh, would dip her brush in the paste.
"I can understand your keeping the notices of your productions, which I suppose have a certain value, but this sort of childish gossip...."
"Gossip keeps my name before the public."
Then he would fancy that he caught a faint murmur about "lack of dignity," and once even he thought she whispered something about "lack of humor."
Therefore, in view of the importance he seemed to attach to the most irrelevant paragraph, Miss Hamilton could not be blamed for drawing his attention to a long article in one of those critical quarterlies or monthlies that are read in club smoking-rooms in the same spirit of desperation in which at railway stations belated travelers read time-tables. This article was entitled What Is Wrong With Our Drama? and was signed with some obscurely allusive pseudonym.
"I suppose I am involved in the general condemnation?" said John, with an attempt at a debonair indifference.