at will my wife and children do?' looked at him, and repeated,
'At nine o'clock last night!' just as though that were the important
part of the message."

"Well, but, general," said Phillips, smiling, "that's dramatic enough
as it is, I think. Why--"

"Yes," interrupted the general, quickly and triumphantly. "But that is
not what you would have made him say, is it? That's my point."

"There was a man told me once," Lord Arbuthnot began, leisurely--"he
was a great chum of mine, and it illustrates what Sir Henry has said,
I think--he was engaged to a girl, and he had a misunderstanding or an
understanding with her that opened both their eyes, at a dance, and
the next afternoon he called, and they talked it over in the
drawing-room, with the tea-tray between them, and agreed to end it. On
the stage he would have risen and said, 'Well, the comedy is over, the
tragedy begins, or the curtain falls;' and she would have gone to the
piano and played Chopin sadly while he made his exit. Instead of
which he got up to go without saying anything, and as he rose he upset
a cup and saucer on the tea-table, and said, 'Oh, I beg your pardon;'
and she said, 'It isn't broken;' and he went out. You see," the young
man added, smiling, "there were two young people whose hearts were
breaking, and yet they talked of teacups, not because they did not
feel, but because custom is too strong on us and too much for us. We
do not say dramatic things or do theatrical ones. It does not make
interesting reading, but it is the truth."

"Exactly," cut in the Austrian Minister, eagerly. "And then there is
the prerogative of the author and of the playwright to drop a curtain
whenever he wants to, or to put a stop to everything by ending the
chapter. That isn't fair. That is an advantage over nature. When some
one accuses some one else of doing something dreadful at the play,
down comes the curtain quick and keeps things at fever point, or the
chapter ends with a lot of stars, and the next page begins with a
description of a sunset two weeks later. To be true, we ought to be
told what the man who is accused said in the reply, or what happened
during those two weeks before the sunset. The author really has no
right to choose only the critical moments, and to shut out the
commonplace, every-day life by a sort of literary closure. That is, if
he claims to tell the truth."

Phillips raised his eyebrows and looked carefully around the table.
"Does any one