Brandon somehow felt as if a bucket of cold water had been dashed over him. He had allowed himself to expect more sonorous epithets. Intoxicated by the play’s magic, he suddenly took the bull by the horns. “I want you to put it up at your best theater in the next six months,” he said.
“My dear boy,” Pomfret gasped, “do you want to ruin me?”
“What’s the objection?”
“Simply that it isn’t a commercial proposition. Mind, I’m not saying a word against the play. You’ve got a wonderful head to have thought of it all, but as I say, it isn’t a commercial proposition.”
“It isn’t my head that’s thought of it, you old dunce,” said Brandon. “Therefore I invite you to express yourself quite freely and frankly.”
“Well, in the first place,” said the great man, drawing at his cigar, “the subject itself is not suited to the theater.”
“You think so?”
“I’m sure of it. The whole thing is far too fantastic.”
“Don’t you think the central figure is a wonderful conception?”
“Yes, I do. But who do you suppose is going to play a god who works miracles, who is the genius of love and laughter, who heals the wounds of the world by converting it to a religion of universal brotherhood, universal fellowship, universal joy? Of course, in its way it’s sublime, but the whole thing is full of peril.”