Leandre—a dull dog, as you will have conceived—looked contemptuously down upon the little man. “And you, what were you born for?” he wondered.
“Nobody knows,” was the candid admission. “Nor yet why. It is the case of many of us, my dear, believe me.”
“But why”—M. Binet took him up, and thus spoilt the beginnings of a very pretty quarrel—“why do you say that Leandre is wrong?”
“To be general, because he is always wrong. To be particular, because I judge the audience of Guichen to be too sophisticated for ‘The Heartless Father.’”
“You would put it more happily,” interposed Andre-Louis—who was the cause of this discussion—“if you said that ‘The Heartless Father’ is too unsophisticated for the audience of Guichen.”
“Why, what’s the difference?” asked Leandre.
“I didn’t imply a difference. I merely suggested that it is a happier way to express the fact.”
“The gentleman is being subtle,” sneered Binet.
“Why happier?” Harlequin demanded.
“Because it is easier to bring ‘The Heartless Father’ to the sophistication of the Guichen audience, than the Guichen audience to the unsophistication of ‘The Heartless Father.’”