"You don't really want me to stick in this paragraph from _High Life_?" she would protest. "Which one is that?" "Why, this ridiculous announcement that you've decided to live on the upper slopes of the Andes for the next few months in order to gather material for a tragedy about the Incas." "Oh, I don't know. It's rather amusing, I think," John would insist, apologetically. Then, rather lamely, he would add, "You see, I subscribe." Miss Hamilton, with a sigh, would dip her brush in the paste. "I can understand your keeping the notices of your productions, which I suppose have a certain value, but this sort of childish gossip...." "Gossip keeps my name before the public." Then he would fancy that he caught a faint murmur about "lack of dignity," and once even he thought she whispered something about "lack of humor." Therefore, in view of the importance he seemed to attach to the most irrelevant paragraph, Miss Hamilton could not be blamed for drawing his attention to a long article in one of those critical quarterlies or monthlies that are read in club smoking-rooms in the same spirit of desperation in which at railway stations belated travelers read time-tables. This article was entitled _What Is Wrong With Our Drama?_ and was signed with some obscurely allusive pseudonym. "I suppose I am involved in the general condemnation?" said John, with an attempt at a debonair indifference. Had he been alone he might have refrained from a descent into particulars, but having laid so much stress upon the salvage of worthless flotsam, he could not in Miss Hamilton's presence ignore this large wreck. "_Let us pause now to contemplate the roundest and the rosiest of our romantic cherubs._ Ha-ha! I suppose the fellow thinks that will irritate me. As a matter of fact, I think it's rather funny, don't you? Rather clever, I mean. Eh? _But, after all, should we take Mr. Touchwood seriously? He is only an exuberant schoolboy prancing about with a pudding-dish on his head and shouting 'Let's pretend I'm a Knight-at-Arms' to a large and susceptible public. Let us say to Mr. Touchwood in the words of an earlier romantic who was the fount and origin of all this Gothic stucco:_ _'O what can ail thee, Knight-at-Arms,_ _So staggered by the critics' tone?_ _The pit and gallery are full,_ _And the play has gone.'_ "I don't mind what he says about _me_," John assured his secretary. "But I do resent his parodying Keats. Yes, I do strongly resent that. I wonder who wrote it. I call it rather personal for anonymous criticism." "Shall I stick it in the book?" "Certainly," the wounded lion uttered with a roar of disdain. At least that was the way John fancied he said "certainly." "Do you really want to know who wrote this article?" she asked, seriously, a minute or two later. "It wasn't James?" the victim exclaimed in a flash of comprehension.