I like them. I have even seen
some of them acted. I have seen, for instance, the Agamemnon given by
the boys of Bradfield College, in their model open-air Greek theatre,
built out of a chalk-pit, and I have sat gripped from beginning to end
by the tremendous drama. I am not talking foolishly. I know as much as
the ordinary man need know about Greek tragedy. But in spite of
Aristotle (who ought to have been strangled at birth, like all other
bland doctrinaires--and of all the doctrinaires on art, there has none
been so blandly egregious since the early morning long ago when the
pre-historic artist who drew an elk on the omoplate of a bison was
clubbed by the superior person of his day who could not draw for
nuts)--in spite of Aristotle and the rest of the theorists, I assert
that, as far as my experience goes, in the ordinary wary modern life to
which we are accustomed, doom and inevitableness do not matter a hang.
If we have any common-sense we can dodge them. Most of us do. Of course,
if a woman marries a congenital idiot there are bound to be
ructions--here we are entering the domain of pathology, which is as
doomful as you please; but in our ordinary modern life ninety per cent.
of the tragedies are determined by sheer million to one fortuities. The
history of our great criminal trials, for instance, is a romance of
coincidence. It is your melodramatist and not your Aristotelian purist
that knows what he's talking about when he writes a play. He only has to
look about him and draw what happens in real life. That there may be an
Eternal Puckish Malice arranging and deranging human destinies is
another question. I am neither a theologian nor a metaphysician, and I
do not desire to discuss the subject. I only maintain that, had it not
been for sheer chance, Adrian's secret would never have been discovered
a second time. I cannot see any doom about it. A series of sheer, silly
accidents on the part of Jaffery and myself had brought Doria face to
face with these incriminating papers. As for her having gained access
to the flat without the porter's knowledge, that had been calculation
on her part. She had watched at the street entrance until he had taken
some one up in the lift, and then she had mounted the interminable
stairs.

I could have caught Jaffery by letter at Genoa or Marseilles; but in
view of his imminent return, I did not write to him. What useful purpose
would have been served? He would have left the steamsh