"Goodness me, you might ask the same thing about Leda, or Helen of Troy."
"Ha! Ha!" laughed the Doctor. "But we know what they did!"
"A lot you do. It is because they are old classics, and you accept them, whereas my story is quite new and original—and you were unprepared for it, and so you can't appreciate it. Anyway, it's my first-born story, and I'll defend it with my life."
Only a laugh replied to the challenge, and the attitude of defense he struck, as he leaped to his feet, though the Journalist said, under his breath, "It takes a carver in stone to think of a tale like that!"
"But think," replied the Doctor, "how much trouble some women would escape if they kept on saying A B C like that—for the A B C is usually lovely—and when it was time to X Y Z—often terrible, they just slipped out through the 'open door.'"
"On the other hand, they risk losing heaps of fun," said the Journalist.
"What I like about that story," said the Lawyer, "is that it is so aristocratic. Every one seems to have plenty of money. They all three do just what they like, have no duties but to analyze themselves, and evidently everything goes like clockwork. The husband enjoys being morbid, and has the means to be gloriously so. The sculptor likes to carve Edgar Allan Poe all over the place, and the fair lady is able to gratify the tastes of both men."
"You can laugh as much as you please," sighed the Sculptor, "I wish it had happened to me."
"Well," said the Doctor, "you have the privilege of going to bed and dreaming that it did."
"Thank you," answered the Sculptor. "That is just what I am going to do."