“But now you fancy that you have formed a right idea of what is meant by three years?”

“Well, a better idea, at any rate.”

“You are still a good way off it.  But if you have formed a right estimate of a woman’s friendship——­”

“That’s still something, you mean to say?  But why did you stop short, Mr. Courtland?”

Phyllis was looking up to his face with a smile of inquiry.

“I was afraid that you might think I was on the way to preach a sermon on the text of woman’s friendship.  I pulled myself up just in time.  I’m glad that I didn’t frighten you.”

“Oh, no; you didn’t frighten me, Mr. Courtland.  I was only wondering how you would go on—­whether you would treat the topic sentimentally or cynically.”

“And what conclusion did you come to on the subject?”

“I know that you are a brave man—­perhaps the bravest man alive.  You would, I think, have treated the question seriously—­feelingly.”

He laughed.

“The adoption of that course implies courage certainly.  All the men of sentimentality—­which is something quite different from sentiment, mind you—­have taken to writing melodrama and penny novelettes.  You didn’t hear much sentimentality on this stage to-night, or any other night, for that matter.”

“No; it would have sounded unreal.  A Parthenon audience would resent what they believed to be a false note in art; and a Parthenon audience is supposed to be the concentration of the spirit of the period in thought and art; isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.  I’m half a savage.  But I like to think the best of a Parthenon audience; you and I formed part of that concentration to-night—­yes, I like to think the best of it.  I suppose we know—­we, the Parthenon audience, I mean—­what our feelings are on the art of acting—­the art of play-writing.”

“I shouldn’t like to have to define my feelings at a moment’s notice.”

“One must make a beginning, and then work up gradually to the definition.”

“For instance——­”

“Well, for instance, there’s something that people call realism nowadays.”

“My father has his ideas on what’s called realism,” Phyllis laughed.  “‘Realism in painting is the ideal with a smudge.’”

“I should like to hear what you think of it?”

He also laughed sympathetically.

“Oh, I only venture to think that realism is the opposite to reality.”

“And, so far as I can gather, your definition is not wanting in breadth—­no, nor in accuracy.  Sentimentality is the opposite to sentiment.”

“That is a point on which we agreed a moment ago.  My father says that sentiment is a strong man’s concealment of what he feels, while sentimentality is a weak man’s expression of what he doesn’t feel.”