"No. False premises entirely. She says something about my wicked heart, and evidently intends to pierce that depraved organ, but a woman never hits what she aims at, and I deny that I'm ever stabbed through the heart. Say in the region or the neighbourhood of the heart, and go on with your talk."
"Very well. She stabs you in a spot so vital that you die in a few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing, you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward, you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa, which you fall upon, and, finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice, your clinched hand comes with a thud on the boards, and all is over."
"Admirably described, Carlos. Lord! I wish my audience paid such attention to my efforts as you do. Now you claim this is all wrong, do you?"
"All wrong."
"Suppose she stabbed you, what would you do?"
"I would plunge forward on my face—dead."
"Great heavens! What would become of your curtain?"
"Oh, hang the curtain!"
"It's all very well for you to maledict the curtain, Carl, but you must work up to it. Your curtain would come down, and your friends in the gallery wouldn't know what had happened. Now I go through the evolutions you so graphically describe, and the audience gets time to take in the situation. They say, chuckling to themselves, 'that villain's got his dose at last, and serve him right too.' They want to enjoy his struggles, while the heroine stands grimly at the door taking care that he doesn't get away. Then when my fist comes down flop on the stage and they realise that I am indeed done for, the yell of triumph that goes up is something delicious to hear."
"That's just the point, Dupré. I claim the actor has no right to hear applause—that he should not know there is such a thing as an audience. His business is to portray life exactly as it is."