The beggar looked up at Gud, a glint of horror in his eyes, and murmured slowly: "Someone destroyed the eternal triangle.... There can never be any more novels, ... nor plays ... nor movies ... nor realism ... nor romance ... nor royalties ... nor dinners at the Alhambra with Gwendolyn ... nor.... Please sir, just a copper, I am old and lame." "Cheer up," encouraged Gud, "I feel it my duty to help you. Was this triangle that seemed to have been the life of your business equilateral or isosceles?" "Neither," replied the beggar, now with the bearing of a true novelist, "it was the eternal triangle which is a plot of a certain very literary relation of the sexes, in which three individuals form the angles." "Why just three?" asked Gud. "It seems that three sell best," said the novelist. "Two do not interest the reader, and four, five or more tire him; three characters sell best, which is why such a triangle is called eternal." "I understand that three elements make the best triangle--and one shouldn't fool too much with mathematics. But what about these sexes?" "It makes no difference," replied the beggar, "how the sexes are arranged, just so both sexes are represented on the triangle." "Both sexes," repeated Gud--"then you only have two sexes?" "Certainly, three characters of two sexes form the eternal triangle, any way you arrange them; isn't that perfectly simple?" "It is simple, more simple than perfect. Now, pick up the coins you cast into the gutter and buy yourself a pencil and a pad and start to work. You will find eternal triangles have become as plentiful as lies, and what is more important, perfectly moral." "You speak," replied the novelist, "with authority, and my understanding will come, no doubt, with inspiration. I thank you sir, especially for your hopeful words about the possibilities of fiction becoming moral. You can not realize how the necessity of dealing with immorality wears on the conscience of a novelist; nor how those hypocritical critics revile us by insinuating that we write of immorality because we live it. We write of it, sir, because the editors and the public demand it, and for no other reason. If immorality in fiction were not profitable we would not write at all. Again I thank you sir, and good day to you." Chapter XXV As Gud and the Underdog walked on their way, they passed through a dark valley where they could hardly see in the murkiness to keep their feet on the Impossible Curve, and so they proceeded slowly with eyes and ears alert. Presently Fidu stopped and cocked his ear, for his sense of hearing was more acute than his master's. When Gud refused to stop, Fidu ran on for a time, and then he stopped again and listened, and this time Gud stopped and listened also, whereupon he heard from afar, the sound as of a heavy clanking chain.