t, and I deny that I'm ever stabbed
through the heart. Say in the region or the neighborhood of the heart,
and go on with your talk."

"Very well. She stabs you in a spot so vital that you die in a
few minutes. You throw up your hands, you stagger against the
mantel-shelf, you tear open your collar and then grope at nothing; you
press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward; you
call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa which you fall upon,
and finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where
you kick out once or twice; your clinched hand comes down with a thud
on the boards, and all is over."

"Admirably described, Carlos. I wish my audience paid such attention
to my efforts as you do. Now, you claim this is all wrong, do you?"

"All wrong."

"Suppose she stabbed you, what would _you_ do?"

"I would plunge forward on my face--dead."

"Great Heavens! What would become of your curtain?"

"Oh, bother the curtain!"

"It's all very well for you to condemn the curtain, Carl, but you must
work up to it. Your curtain would come down, and your friends in
the gallery would not know what had happened. Now, I go through the
evolutions you so graphically describe, and the audience gets time
to take in the situation. They say, chuckling to themselves, 'That
villain's got his dose at last, and serves him right, too.' They want
to enjoy his struggles, while she stands grimly at the door taking
care that he doesn't get away. Then when my fist comes down flop on
the stage, and they realize that I am indeed done for, the yell of
triumph that goes up is something delicious to hear."

"That's just the point, Dupre. I claim the actor has no right to
hear applause--that he should not know there is such a thing as an
audience. His business is to portray life exactly as it is."

"You can't portray life in a death scene, Carl."

"Dupre, I lose all patience with you, or rather I would did I not
know that you are much deeper than you would have us suppose. You
apparently won't see that I am very much in earnest about this."

"Of course you are, my boy, and that is one reason why you will
become a very great actor, I was ambitious myself once; but as we grow
older"--Dupre shrugged his shoulders--"well, we begin to have an eye
on the box-office receipts. I think you sometimes forget that I am a
good deal older than you are."

"You mean that I am a fool and that I may learn wisdom with age.