"Nothing!" he screamed. "You got off for nothing? You ought to have been
whipped at the cart's tail!"

"Oh, come, it's not as bad as that," suggested old Deleglise.

"Not bad! There isn't a laugh in it from beginning to end."

"There wasn't intended to be," I interrupted.

"Why not, you swindler? What were you sent into the world to do? To make
it laugh."

"I want to make it think," I told him.

"Make it think! Hasn't it got enough to think about? Aren't there ten
thousand penny-a-liners, poets, tragedians, tub-thumpers, long-eared
philosophers, boring it to death? Who are you to turn up your nose at
your work and tell the Almighty His own business? You are here to make
us laugh. Get on with your work, you confounded young idiot!"

Urban Vane was the only one among them who understood me, who agreed
with me that I was fitted for higher things than merely to minister
to the world's need of laughter. He alone it was who would listen
with approval to my dreams of becoming a famous tragedian, a writer of
soul-searching books, of passion-analysing plays. I never saw him laugh
himself, certainly not at anything funny. "Humour!" he would explain
in his languid drawl, "personally it doesn't amuse me." One felt its
introduction into the scheme of life had been an error. He was a large,
fleshy man, with a dreamy, caressing voice and strangely impassive face.
Where he came from, who he was, nobody knew. Without ever passing a
remark himself that was worth listening to, he, nevertheless, by some
mysterious trick of manner I am unable to explain, soon established
himself, even throughout that company, where as a rule men found their
proper level, as a silent authority in all contests of wit or argument.
Stories at which he listened, bored, fell flat. The _bon mot_ at which
some faint suggestion of a smile quivered round his clean-shaven lips
was felt to be the crown of the discussion. I can only conclude his
secret to have been his magnificent assumption of superiority, added to
a sphinx-like impenetrability behind which he could always retire from
any danger of exposure. Subjects about which he knew nothing--and I
have come to the conclusion they were more numerous than was
suspected--became in his presence topics outside the radius of
cultivated consideration: one felt ashamed of having introduced them.
His own subjects--they were few but exclusive--he had the knack of
elevating into intellectual tests: one felt ashamed