nutterably tedious. Precisely.
That is the stamp of the ignobly decent life. If it were anything but
tedious it would be untrue. I speak, of course, of its effect upon the
ordinary reader.'

'I couldn't do it,' said Reardon.

'Certainly you couldn't. You--well, you are a psychological realist in
the sphere of culture. You are impatient of vulgar circumstances.'

'In a great measure because my life has been martyred by them.'

'And for that very same reason I delight in them,' cried Biffen.
'You are repelled by what has injured you; I am attracted by it. This
divergence is very interesting; but for that, we should have resembled
each other so closely. You know that by temper we are rabid idealists,
both of us.'

'I suppose so.'

'But let me go on. I want, among other things, to insist upon the
fateful power of trivial incidents. No one has yet dared to do this
seriously. It has often been done in farce, and that's why farcical
writing so often makes one melancholy. You know my stock instances
of the kind of thing I mean. There was poor Allen, who lost the most
valuable opportunity of his life because he hadn't a clean shirt to put
on; and Williamson, who would probably have married that rich girl but
for the grain of dust that got into his eye, and made him unable to say
or do anything at the critical moment.'

Reardon burst into a roar of laughter.

'There you are!' cried Biffen, with friendly annoyance. 'You take the
conventional view. If you wrote of these things you would represent them
as laughable.'

'They are laughable,' asserted the other, 'however serious to the
persons concerned. The mere fact of grave issues in life depending on
such paltry things is monstrously ludicrous. Life is a huge farce, and
the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to
defy fate with mocking laughter.'

'That's all very well, but it isn't an original view. I am not lacking
in sense of humour, but I prefer to treat these aspects of life from
an impartial standpoint. The man who laughs takes the side of a cruel
omnipotence, if one can imagine such a thing.

I want to take no side at all; simply to say, Look, this is the kind of
thing that happens.'

'I admire your honesty, Biffen,' said Reardon, sighing. 'You will
never sell work of this kind, yet you have the courage to go on with it
because you believe in it.'

'I don't know; I may perhaps sell it some day.'

'In the meantime,' said Reardon,