und myself reading it again with delight. Suddenly a
voice beside me said:--

"'Very clever, my boy, very clever indeed. If you would just turn it
topsy-turvy, change all those bitter, truthful speeches into noble
sentiments; make your Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (who never has
been a popular character) die in the last act instead of the
Yorkshireman, and let your bad woman be reformed by her love for the hero
and go off somewhere by herself and be good to the poor in a black frock,
the piece might be worth putting on the stage.'

"I turned indignantly to see who was speaking. The opinions sounded like
those of a theatrical manager. No one was in the room but I and the cat.
No doubt I had been talking to myself, but the voice was strange to me.

"'Be reformed by her love for the hero!' I retorted, contemptuously, for
I was unable to grasp the idea that I was arguing only with myself, 'why
it's his mad passion for her that ruins his life.'

"'And will ruin the play with the great B.P.,' returned the other voice.
'The British dramatic hero has no passion, but a pure and respectful
admiration for an honest, hearty English girl--pronounced "gey-url." You
don't know the canons of your art.'

"'And besides,' I persisted, unheeding the interruption, 'women born and
bred and soaked for thirty years in an atmosphere of sin don't reform.'

"'Well, this one's got to, that's all,' was the sneering reply, 'let her
hear an organ.'

"'But as an artist--,' I protested.

"'You will be always unsuccessful,' was the rejoinder. 'My dear fellow,
you and your plays, artistic or in artistic, will be forgotten in a very
few years hence. You give the world what it wants, and the world will
give you what you want. Please, if you wish to live.'

"So, with Pyramids beside me day by day, I re-wrote the play, and
whenever I felt a thing to be utterly impossible and false I put it down
with a grin. And every character I made to talk clap-trap sentiment
while Pyramids purred, and I took care that everyone of my puppets did
that which was right in the eyes of the lady with the lorgnettes in the
second row of the dress circle; and old Hewson says the play will run
five hundred nights.

"But what is worst," concluded Dick, "is that I am not ashamed of myself,
and that I seem content."

"What do you think the animal is?" I asked with a laugh, "an evil
spirit"? For it had passed into the next room and so out through the
open