“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.  I quite admit that you are a better actor than I am; in fact, I said so only a moment ago, but—­”

“You wrong me, Brutus; I said an older soldier, not a better.  But I will take you on your own grounds.  Have you ever seen a man stabbed or shot through the heart?”

“I never have, but I know mighty well he wouldn’t undo his necktie afterwards.”

Dupre threw back his head and laughed.

“Who is flippant now?” he asked.

“I don’t undo my necktie; I merely tear off my collar, which a dying man may surely be permitted to do.  But until you have seen a man die from such a stab as I receive every night, I don’t understand how you can justly find fault with my rendition of the tragedy.  I imagine, you know, that the truth lies between the two extremes.  The man done to death would likely not make such a fuss as I make; nor would he depart so quickly as you say he would, without giving the gallery gods a show for their money.  But here we are at the theatre, Carlos, and this acrimonious debate is closed—­until we take our next walk together.”