“And you find they have no time to be agreeable?”

“Quite the contrary.  There is nothing they are not interesting in, nothing about which they cannot talk, and talk intensely.  They absorb everything, and have the gift of acquiring intelligence without, as one of them told me, having to waste time in reading.  Yes, it is a most interesting city.”

The coming in of Mr. Morgan gave another turn to the talk.  He had been to see a rural American play, an exhibition of country life and character, constructed in absolute disregard of any traditions of the stage.

“I don’t suppose,” Mr. Morgan said, “a foreigner would understand it; it would be impossible in Paris, incomprehensible in London.”

“Yes, I saw it,” said Mr. Lyon, thus appealed to.  “It was very odd, and seemed to amuse the audience immensely.  I suppose one must be familiar with American farm life to see the points of it.  I confess that while I sat there, in an audience so keenly in sympathy with the play—­almost a part of it, one might say—­I doubted if I understood your people as well as I thought I did when I had been here a week only.  Perhaps this is the beginning of an American drama.”

“Some people say that it is.”

“But it is so local!”

“Anything that is true must be true to local conditions, to begin with.  The only question is, is it true to human nature?  What puzzled me in this American play was its raising the old question of nature and art.  You’ve seen Coquelin?  Well, that is acting, as artificial as a sonnet, the perfection of training, skill in an art.  You never doubt that he is performing in a play for the entertainment of an audience.  You have the same enjoyment of it that you have of a picture—­a picture, I mean, full of character and sentiment, not a photograph.  But I don’t think of Denman Thompson as an actor trained to perfection in a dramatic school, but as a New Hampshire farmer.  I don’t admire his skill; I admire him.  There is plenty that is artificial, vulgarly conventional, in his play, plenty of imitation of the rustic that shows it is imitation, but he is the natural man.  If he is a stage illusion, he does not seem so to me.”  “Probably to an American audience only he does not,” Mr. Lyon remarked.

“Well, that is getting to be a tolerably large audience.”

“I doubt if you will change the laws of art,” said Mr. Lyon, rising to go.

“We shall hope to see you again at our house,” my wife said.

“You are very good.  I should like it; but my time is running out.”

“If you cannot come, you may leave your adieus with Miss Debree, who is staying some time in the city,” my wife said, evidently to Margaret’s annoyance.  But she could do no less than give him her city address, though the information was not accompanied by any invitation in her manner.