He joined Bangs just as that youth was finishing his after-breakfast cigar. Even under its soothing influence, he was in the mood of combined exasperation and depression with which his friends were becoming familiar.
"If we had begun work as soon as we got back to town after your sister's wedding," he told Laurie, "we'd have had two acts ready by now, in the rough."
"No reason why you shouldn't have four acts ready, so far as I can see," murmured Laurie, cheerfully attacking his grape-fruit. "All you've got to do is to write 'em."
"Not till I've talked 'em over with you and got your ideas," he declared, positively. "If you'd just let me give you an outline—"
Laurie set down his cup.
"Do I get my breakfast in peace, or don't I?" he demanded, coldly.
"You do, confound you!"
Bangs bit off the end of a fresh cigar and smoked it in stolid silence. He was a person of one idea. If he couldn't talk about the play, he couldn't talk at all. He meditated, considering his characters, his situations, his partner's and his own position, in a mental jumble that had lately become habitual and which was seriously affecting his nerves. Laurie, as he ate, chatted cheerfully and at random, apparently avoiding with care any subject that might interest his partner. Bangs rose abruptly.
"Well, I'm off," he said. "See you at dinner time, I suppose."