He couldn’t do it. Detachment slipped from him, never to return till the curtain fell. He wasn’t a superman, immune from other men’s emotions. The play took hold of him and swayed him with the rest. He tried resistance, vainly; told himself that he was here, not, as these others were, for pleasure, but to learn, to learn; and the play gripped him the harder for his attempt to take it coldly. At the end, Sam was applauding wildly while Stewart watched him with cynical amusement. “Caught you all right,” he said, “and by way of a confession I’ll own that the damned thing nearly got me once. Rum place, the theatre, isn’t it? But,” he grew more serious, “I’ve to write about that, write without being libellous about that maudlin, sentimental, erotic, religious trash. It’s enough to make a man give up journalism and take to something honest, like coal-heaving. But I’m forgetting. I brought you here to teach you something. Have you learnt it? That’s a play, but the same thing applies to a novel. You find novels with ‘The Sign of the Cross’ in them, my boy. Queasy sentimentality to sicken a bee, and, for the rest, don’t forget that Jesus died for you to make money out of novels. This play makes me blasphemous, but I’m doing the devil’s advocate to you to-night, so it’s all in the picture. When I’ve finished my notice I think I’ll try a ‘short’ on ‘The Tradesman Publisher’ or ‘The Dignity of Letters.’ It will be good for my conscience.” “I wish you would,” said Sam. “I’ll reply to it, with a list of the classics I am going to publish.” “Sometimes,” said Stewart, “you rather sicken me. I am speaking of the _Manchester Warden_, not the _Sunday Judge_. Good-night.” But the vacillations of a journalist with a foot in two camps and an idealistic standard which he hardly pretended to take seriously himself left Sam unimpressed. The play and Stewart’s description of its essence had given him furiously to think. He imagined that he knew the sort of novel he wanted and he was not troubled by Stewart’s disease of dual standards. Sam had one standard, the success standard; and anything else was muddle-headedness. At the same time he felt most grateful to Stewart who had advertised the pamphlet and now presented him with a policy. It was a policy, but not one for immediate application. _Festina lente_ was his watchword for the moment, and he devoted himself to putting new life into the sales of texts and to the issue of the “Branstone + Classics.” They were, one might note in passing, the Branstone + Classics: his name loomed large and the names of their authors, the insignificants like à Kempis and Bunyan, were properly small; and he put the sign of the cross between the Branstone and the Classics. He intended it to be his trade-mark, and if it were his trade-mark, why not use it? It infringed nobody’s copyright.