"I understand that three elements make the best triangle—and one shouldn't fool too much with mathematics. But what about these sexes?"
"It makes no difference," replied the beggar, "how the sexes are arranged, just so both sexes are represented on the triangle."
"Both sexes," repeated Gud—"then you only have two sexes?"
"Certainly, three characters of two sexes form the eternal triangle, any way you arrange them; isn't that perfectly simple?"
"It is simple, more simple than perfect. Now, pick up the coins you cast into the gutter and buy yourself a pencil and a pad and start to work. You will find eternal triangles have become as plentiful as lies, and what is more important, perfectly moral."
"You speak," replied the novelist, "with authority, and my understanding will come, no doubt, with inspiration. I thank you sir, especially for your hopeful words about the possibilities of fiction becoming moral. You can not realize how the necessity of dealing with immorality wears on the conscience of a novelist; nor how those hypocritical critics revile us by insinuating that we write of immorality because we live it. We write of it, sir, because the editors and the public demand it, and for no other reason. If immorality in fiction were not profitable we would not write at all. Again I thank you sir, and good day to you."
Chapter XXV
As Gud and the Underdog walked on their way, they passed through a dark valley where they could hardly see in the murkiness to keep their feet on the Impossible Curve, and so they proceeded slowly with eyes and ears alert.
Presently Fidu stopped and cocked his ear, for his sense of hearing was more acute than his master's. When Gud refused to stop, Fidu ran on for a time, and then he stopped again and listened, and this time Gud stopped and listened also, whereupon he heard from afar, the sound as of a heavy clanking chain.