“But of course you want to be acted?”
“Of course I do—but it’s a sudden descent. I want to intensely, but I’m sorry I want to.”
“It’s there indeed that the difficulties begin,” said Mrs. Alsager, a little off her guard.
“How can you say that? It’s there that they end!”
“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.”