"Lange, Anne Françoise Elizabeth," he said, "I know you. You are a French actress, born in Genoa on the seventeenth of September, 1772, and you made your first appearance on the stage in _L'Ecossaise_ in 1788. Your talent and your beauty gave you an enormous success in _Pamela_. It has taken me years to find you, but now we are united at last." The girl turned like a frightened aardvark, still holding the cromorne in her hand. Then she smiled. "Weenix, Barnaby Bernard (1777-1829)," she said very slowly, "you started business as a publisher in London about 1797." They looked at each other for a moment in silence. He was the first to speak. "Miss Lange, Anne," he said, "let us go together to Lar--and be happy there--happy as two ais, or three-toed South American sloths." She lowered her eyes. "I will go with you Mr. Weenix-Barney," she said, "to the ends of the earth. But why to Lar? Why not to Wem?" "Because," said the young man, "Lar is the capital of Laristan, in 27 degrees, 30 minutes N., 180 miles from Shiraz, and contains an old bazaar consisting of four arcades each 180 feet long." Their eyes met, and she placed her hands in his. And, from the woods, came the mellow whinnying of a herd of vip, the wool of which is highly valued for weaving. XVII THE PASSING OF THE ORTHODOX PARADOX Whatever irreparable harm may have been done to Society by the recent epidemic of crook, sex and other dialect plays, one great alleviation has resulted. They have driven up-stage, for the time being, the characters who exist on tea and repartee in "The drawing-room of Sir Arthur Peaversham's town house, Grosvenor Square. Time: late Autumn." A person in a crook play may have talked underworld patois which no self-respecting criminal would have allowed himself to utter, but he did not sit on a divan and evolve abnormal _bons mots_ with each and every breath. The misguided and misinformed daughter in the Self and Sex Play may have lisped words which only an interne should hear, but she did not offer a succession of brilliant but meaningless paradoxes as a substitute for real conversation. Continuously snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such acts as those of "Cooney & LeBlanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team." And even _they_ manage to scrape along without the paradoxes. But there was a time, beginning with the Oscar Wilde era, when no unprotected thought was safe. [Illustration: "Snappy back-talk is now encountered chiefly in such acts as 'Cooney & LeBlanc, the Eccentric Comedy Dancing Team.'"]