--into flat and foolish deserts.

Dorriforth. He leads us into his own mind, his own vision of things:
that's the only place into which the poet _can_ lead us. It's there that
he finds "As You Like It," it is there that he finds "Comus," or "The
Way of the World," or the Christmas pantomime. It is when he betrays us,
after he has got us in and locked the door, when he can't keep from us
that we are in a bare little hole and that there are no pictures on the
walls, it is then that the immediate and the foolish overwhelm us.

Amicia. That's what I liked in the piece we have been looking at. There
was an artistic intention, and the little room wasn't bare: there was
sociable company in it. The actors were very humble aspirants, they were
common--

Auberon. Ah, when the French give their mind to that--!

Amicia. Nevertheless they struck me as recruits to an interesting cause,
which as yet (the house was so empty) could confer neither money nor
glory. They had the air, poor things, of working for love.

Auberon. For love of what?

Amicia. Of the whole little enterprise--the idea of the Theatre Libre.

Florentia. Gracious, what you see in things! Don't you suppose they were
paid?

Amicia. I know nothing about it. I liked their shabbiness--they had
only what was indispensable in the way of dress and scenery. That often
pleases me: the imagination, in certain cases, is more finely persuaded
by the little than by the much.

Dorriforth. I see what Amicia means.

Florentia. I'll warrant you do, and a great deal more besides.

Dorriforth. When the appointments are meagre and sketchy the
responsibility that rests upon the actors becomes a still more serious
thing, and the spectator's observation of the way they rise to it a
pleasure more intense. The face and the voice are more to the purpose
than acres of painted canvas, and a touching intonation, a vivid gesture
or two, than an army of supernumeraries.

Auberon. Why not have everything--the face, the voice, the touching
intonations, the vivid gestures, the acres of painted canvas, _and_ the
army of supernumeraries? Why not use bravely and intelligently every
resource of which the stage disposes? What else was Richard Wagner's
great theory, in producing his operas at Bayreuth?

Dorriforth. Why not, indeed? That would be the ideal. To have the
picture complete at the same time the figures do their part in producing
the particular illusion required--what a perfection a