ubt, influenced by Neville Lytton. That portrait of
Mr. Cutler Walpole has a Neville Lytton feeling. Neville Lytton in his
earlier manner.

_Enter_ SIR PATRICK CULLEN, SIR RALPH BLOOMFIELD BONNINGTON _and_ SIR
COLENSO RIDGEON.

SIR C. RIDGEON. Ah, Sir Patrick, I have just heard that the pictures are
for sale; now I am going to plunge a little. I think they will rise in
value; and by the way I want to ask your opinion as a scientific man. If
I treat four artists with _virus obscaenum_ for three weeks, what will be
the condition of the remaining artists in the fourth week?

SIR P. CULLEN. Colenso, Colenso, you ought to have been a senior
wrangler and then abolished.

SIR C. RIDGEON. What a cynic you are. All the same I've had great
successes, though Dubedat _was_ one of our failures. A rather anaemic
member of the New English Art Club come to me for treatment, and in less
than a year he was an Associate of the Royal Academy; what do you say to
that?

SIR P. CULLEN. Out of Phagocyte, out of mind.

SIR R. B. B. My dear Sir Patrick, how prejudiced you are. Take
MacColl's case: a typical instance of _morbus ferox ars nova anglicana_:
under dear Colenso he became an official at the Tate.

SIR C. RIDGEON. Then there's Sir Charles Holroyd, you remember his high
tempera?

SIR P. CULLEN. There has been a relapse I hear from the catalogue.

SIR R. B. B. How grossly unfair; that is a false bulletin issued by the
former nurse: 'the evil that men do lives after them.'

SIR P. CULLEN. My dear B. B., this is not Dubedat's funeral. Do you
think Bernard Shaw will like the new epilogue?

BERNARD SHAW. He will; I'm shaw.

L. C. C. INSPECTOR. Excuse me, is Mr. Vedrenne here? Ah, yes! There is
Mr. Vedrenne. Will you kindly answer some of my questions? Is that door
on the left a real door? In case of fire I cannot allow property doors;
the actors might be seized with stage fright, and they must have, as Sir
B. B. would say, 'their exits and their entrances.'

VEDRENNE. Everything at the Court Theatre, my dear sir, is real. Ask
Mr. Franks, he will tell you the door is not even a jar. The art, the
acting, the plays, even the audience is real, except a few dramatic
critics I cannot exclude. I admit the audience looks improbable at
matinees; _out of Court_ is a truth in art of which we are only dimly
beginning to understand the significance. [_Noise outside_.

_Enter_ JENNIFER, _dressed in deep mournin