al, satisfactory form, with unmistakable effect and
just at the right moment.

Dorriforth. It shows how the same cause may produce the most diverse
consequences. In this truth lies the only hope of art.

Auberon. Oh, art, art--don't talk about art!

Amicia. Mercy, we must talk about something!

Dorriforth. Auberon hates generalizations. Nevertheless I make bold
to say that we go to the theatre in the same spirit in which we read
a novel, some of us to find one thing and some to find another; and
according as we look for the particular thing we find it.

Auberon. That's a profound remark.

Florentia. We go to find amusement: that, surely, is what we all go for.

Amicia. There's such a diversity in our idea of amusement.

Auberon. Don't you impute to people more ideas than they have?

Dorriforth. Ah, one must do that or one couldn't talk about them. We
go to be interested; to be absorbed, beguiled and to lose ourselves, to
give ourselves up, in short, to a charm.

Florentia. And the charm is the strange, the extraordinary.

Amicia. Ah, speak for yourself! The charm is the recognition of what we
know, what we feel.

Dorriforth. See already how you differ.

"SO!"

What we surrender ourselves to is the touch of nature, the sense of
life.

Amicia. The first thing is to believe.

Florentia. The first thing, on the contrary, is to _dis_believe.

Auberon. Lord, listen to them!

Dorriforth. The first thing is to folio--to care.

Florentia. I read a novel, I go to the theatre, to forget.

Amicia. To forget what?

Florentia. To forget life; to thro myself into something more beautiful
more exciting: into fable and romance.

Dorriforth. The attraction of fable and romance is that it's about _us_,
about you and me--or people whose power to suffer and to enjoy is the
same as ours. In other words, we _live_ their experience, for the time,
and that's hardly escaping from life.

Florentia. I'm not at all particular as to what you call it. Call it an
escape from the common, the prosaic, the immediate.

Dorriforth. You couldn't put it better. That's the life that art, with
Auberon's permission, gives us; that's the distinction it confers. This
is why the greatest commonness is when our guide turns out a vulgar
fellow--the angel, as we had supposed him, who has taken us by the hand.
Then what becomes of our escape?

Florentia. It's precisely then that I complain of him. He leads us into
foul and dreary places