“Oh, ouch—­help!” cried the Sculptor.  “Do I know?”

“Exactly!” answered the Critic, “and that you don’t sticks out in every line of your story.”

“Goodness me, you might ask the same thing about Leda, or Helen of Troy.”

“Ha!  Ha!” laughed the Doctor.  “But we know what they did!”

“A lot you do.  It is because they are old classics, and you accept them, whereas my story is quite new and original—­and you were unprepared for it, and so you can’t appreciate it.  Anyway, it’s my first-born story, and I’ll defend it with my life.”

Only a laugh replied to the challenge, and the attitude of defense he struck, as he leaped to his feet, though the Journalist said, under his breath, “It takes a carver in stone to think of a tale like that!”

“But think,” replied the Doctor, “how much trouble some women would escape if they kept on saying A B C like that—­for the A B C is usually lovely—­and when it was time to X Y Z—­often terrible, they just slipped out through the ‘open door.’”

“On the other hand, they risk losing heaps of fun,” said the Journalist.

“What I like about that story,” said the Lawyer, “is that it is so aristocratic.  Every one seems to have plenty of money.  They all three do just what they like, have no duties but to analyze themselves, and evidently everything goes like clockwork.  The husband enjoys being morbid, and has the means to be gloriously so.  The sculptor likes to carve Edgar Allan Poe all over the place, and the fair lady is able to gratify the tastes of both men.”

“You can laugh as much as you please,” sighed the Sculptor, “I wish it had happened to me.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, “you have the privilege of going to bed and dreaming that it did.”

“Thank you,” answered the Sculptor.  “That is just what I am going to do.”

“What did I tell you last night?” said the Doctor, under his breath, as he watched the Sculptor going slowly toward the house.  “Bet he has been telling that tale to himself under many skies for years!”

“I suppose,” laughed the Journalist, “that the only reason he has never built the tomb is that he has never had the money.”

“Oh, be fair!” said the Violinist.  “He has not built the tomb because he is not his father.  The old man would have done it in a minute, only he lacked imagination.  You bet he never day-dreamed, and yet what skill he had, and what adventures!  He never saw anything but the facts of life, yet how magnificently he recorded them.”

“It is a pity,” sighed the Violinist, “that the son did not seek a different career.”

“What difference does it make after all?” remarked the Doctor.  “One never knows when the next generation will step up or down, and, after all, what does it matter?”

“It is all very well for you to talk,” said the Critic.

“I assure you that the great pageant would have been just as interesting from any other point of view.  It has been a great spectacle,—­this living.  I’m glad I’ve seen it.”