nd yet so
fundamental that they can be eternally played upon, redressed, and
reinterpreted in every language, in every age, and yet remain
inexhaustible in the possibility of variations."

"By George, that is so," said Steingall, waking up. "Every art does go
back to three or four notes. In composition it is the same thing.
Nothing new--nothing new since a thousand years. By George, that is
true! We invent nothing, nothing!"

"Take the eternal triangle," said Quinny hurriedly, not to surrender his
advantage, while Rankin and De Gollyer in a bored way continued to gaze
dreamily at a vagrant star or two. "Two men and a woman, or two women
and a man. Obviously it should be classified as the first of the great
original parent themes. Its variations extend into the thousands. By the
way, Rankin, excellent opportunity, eh, for some of our modern,
painstaking, unemployed jackasses to analyze and classify."

"Quite right," said Rankin without perceiving the satirical note. "Now
there's De Maupassant's Fort comma la Mort--quite the most interesting
variation--shows the turn a genius can give. There the triangle is the
man of middle age, the mother he has loved in his youth and the daughter
he comes to love. It forms, you might say, the head of a whole
subdivision of modern continental literature."

"Quite wrong, Rankin, quite wrong," said Quinny, who would have stated
the other side quite as imperiously. "What you cite is a variation of
quite another theme, the Faust theme--old age longing for youth, the man
who has loved longing for the love of his youth, which is youth itself.
The triangle is the theme of jealousy, the most destructive and,
therefore, the most dramatic of human passions. The Faust theme is the
most fundamental and inevitable of all human experiences, the tragedy of
life itself. Quite a different thing."

Rankin, who never agreed with Quinny unless Quinny maliciously took
advantage of his prior announcement to agree with him, continued to
combat this idea.

"You believe then," said De Gollyer after a certain moment had been
consumed in hair splitting, "that the origin of all dramatic themes is
simply the expression of some human emotion. In other words, there can
exist no more parent themes than there are human emotions."

"I thank you, sir, very well put," said Quinny with a generous wave of
his hand. "Why is the Three Musketeers a basic theme? Simply the
interpretation of comradeship, the emotion one