(He is about to go round behind it.)

DE REVES.  No, don’t go round there.

PRATTLE.  What?  Why not?

DE REVES.  Oh, you wouldn’t understand.

PRATTLE.  Wouldn’t understand?  Why, what have you got?

DE REVES.  Oh, one of those things....  You wouldn’t understand.

PRATTLE.  Of course I’d understand.  Let’s have a look. (The POET walks toward PRATTLE and the screen.  He protests no further. PRATTLE looks round the corner of the screen.) An altar.

DE REVES. (removing the screen altogether).  That is all.  What do you make of it?

(An altar of Greek design, shaped like a pedestal, is revealed.  Papers litter the floor all about it.)

PRATTLE.  I say—­you always were an untidy devil.

DE REVES.  Well, what do you make of it?

PRATTLE.  It reminds me of your room at Eton.

DE REVES.  My room at Eton?

PRATTLE.  Yes, you always had papers all over your floor.

DE REVES.  Oh, yes—­

PRATTLE.  And what are these?

DE REVES.  All these are poems; and this is my altar to Fame.

PRATTLE.  To Fame?

DE REVES.  The same that Homer knew.

PRATTLE.  Good Lord!

DE REVES.  Keats never saw her.  Shelley died too young.  She came late at the best of times, now scarcely ever.

PRATTLE.  But, my dear fellow, you don’t mean that you think there really is such a person?

DE REVES.  I offer all my songs to her.

PRATTLE.  But you don’t mean you think you could actually see Fame?

DE REVES.  We poets personify abstract things, and not poets only but sculptors and painters too.  All the great things of the world are those abstract things.

PRATTLE.  But what I mean is they’re not really there, like you or me.

DE REVES.  To us these things are more real than men, they outlive generations, they watch the passing of Kingdoms:  we go by them like dust; they are still here, unmoved, unsmiling.

PRATTLE.  But, but, you can’t think that you could see Fame, you don’t expect to see it.

DE REVES.  Not to me.  Never to me.  She of the golden trumpet and Greek dress will never appear to me....  We all have our dreams.

PRATTLE.  I say—­what have you been doing all day?

DE REVES.  I?  Oh, only writing a sonnet.

PRATTLE.  Is it a long one?

DE REVES.  Not very.

PRATTLE.  About how long is it?

DE REVES.  About fourteen lines.

PRATTLE (impressively).  I tell you what it is.

DE REVES.  Yes?

PRATTLE.  I tell you what.  You’ve been overworking yourself.  I once got like that on board the Sandhurst, working for the passing-out exam.  I got so bad that I could have seen anything.

DE REVES.  Seen anything?