: In the same way Pan has been made what he is by millions; by
millions to whom he represents world-old traditions.

PRATTLE (_rising from his chair and stepping backwards, laughing and
looking at the_ POET _in a kind of assumed wonder_): I say ... I say ...
You old heathen ... but Good Lord ...

[_He bumps into the high screen behind, pushing it back a little._

DE REVES: Look out! Look out!

PRATTLE: What? What's the matter?

DE REVES: The screen!

PRATTLE: Oh, sorry, yes. I'll put it right.

[_He is about to go round behind it._

DE REVES: No, don't go round there.

PRATTLE: What? Why not?

DE REVES: Oh, you wouldn't understand.

PRATTLE: Wouldn't understand? Why, what have you got?

DE REVES: Oh, one of those things.... You wouldn't understand.

PRATTLE: Of course I'd understand. Let's have a look.

[_The_ POET _walks towards_ PRATTLE _and the screen. He protests no
further._ PRATTLE _looks round the corner of the screen._

An altar.

DE REVES (_removing the screen altogether_): That is all. What do you
make of it?

[_An altar of Greek design, shaped like a pedestal, is revealed. Papers
litter the floor all about it._

PRATTLE: I say--you always were an untidy devil.

DE REVES: Well, what do you make of it?

PRATTLE: It reminds me of your room at Eton.

DE REVES: My room at Eton?

PRATTLE: Yes, you always had papers all over your floor.

DE REVES: Oh, yes----

PRATTLE: And what are these?

DE REVES: All these are poems; and this is my altar to Fame.

PRATTLE: To Fame?

DE REVES: The same that Homer knew.

PRATTLE: Good Lord!

DE REVES: Keats never saw her. Shelley died too young. She came late at
the best of times, now scarcely ever.

PRATTLE: But, my dear fellow, you don't mean that you think there really
is such a person?

DE REVES: I offer all my songs to her.

PRATTLE: But you don't mean you think you could actually _see_ Fame?

DE REVES: We poets personify abstract things, and not poets only but
sculptors[7] and painters too. All the great things of the world are
those abstract things.

PRATTLE: But what I mean is, they're not really there, like you or me.

DE REVES: To us these things are more real than men, they outlive
generations, they watch the passing of kingdoms: we go by them like
dust; they are still there, unmoved, unsmiling.

PRATTLE: But, but, you can't think that you could _see_ Fame, you don't
expect to _see_ it?

DE REVES: Not to me. Never to me.