fictive world.

Dorriforth. Ah, you touch there on one of the minor sorrows of life.
That's an illustration of the general change that comes to pass in us
as we grow older, if we have ever loved the stage: the fading of the
glamour and the mystery that surround it.

Auberon. Do you call it a minor sorrow? It's one of the greatest. And
nothing can mitigate it.

Amicia. Wouldn't it be mitigated a little if the stage were a trifle
better? You must remember how that has changed.

Auberon. Never, never: it's the same old stage. The change is in
ourselves.

Florentia. Well, I never would have given an evening to what we have
just seen. If one could have put it in between luncheon and tea, well
enough. But one's evenings are too precious.

Dorriforth. Note that--it's very important.

Florentia. I mean too precious for that sort of thing.

Auberon. Then you didn't sit spellbound by the little history of the Due
d'Enghien?

Florentia. I sat yawning. Heavens, what a piece!

Amicia. Upon my word I liked it. The last act made me cry.

Dorriforth. Wasn't it a curious, interesting specimen of some of the
things that are worth trying: an attempt to sail closer to the real?

Auberon. How much closer? The fiftieth part of a point--it isn't
calculable.

Florentia. It was just like any other play--I saw no difference. It
had neither a plot, nor a subject, nor dialogue, nor situations, nor
scenery, nor costumes, nor acting.

Amicia. Then it was hardly, as you say, just like any other play.

Auberon. Florentia should have said like any other _bad_'one. The only
way it differed seemed to be that it was bad in theory as well as in
fact.

Amicia. It's a _morceau de vie_, as the French say.

Auberon. Oh, don't begin on the French!

Amicia. It's a French experiment--_que voulez-vous?_

Auberon. English experiments will do.

Dorriforth. No doubt they would--if there _were_ any. But I don't see
them.

Amicia. Fortunately: think what some of them might be! Though
Florentia saw nothing I saw many things in this poor little shabby "Due
d'Enghien," coming over to our roaring London, where the dots have to
be so big on the i's, with its barely audible note of originality. It
appealed to me, touched me, offered me a poignant suggestion of the way
things happen in life.

Auberon. In life they happen clumsily, stupidly, meanly. One goes to
the theatre just for the refreshment of seeing them happen in another
way--in symmetric