“Well,” said the editor, “this would do all three.” “Would you come to hear me, if I wrote the sermon?” “Ah, that's asking a good deal.” “Why don't you develop your idea in an article? You're always bragging that you preach to a larger congregation than I.” “I propose to let you preach to my congregation too, if you'll write this sermon. I've talked to you before about reporting your sermons in _Saturday Afternoon_. They would be a feature; and if we could open with this one, and have a good 'incisive' editorial on it, disputing some of your positions, and treating certain others with a little satire, at the same time maintaining a very respectful attitude towards you on the whole, and calling attention to the fact that there was a strong and increasing interest in your 'utterances,' which we were the first to recognise,--it would be a card. We might agree beforehand on the points the editorial was to touch, and so make one hand wash another. See?” “I see that journalism has eaten into your soul. What is your subject?” “Well, in general terms, and in a single word, _Complicity_. Don't you think that would be rather taking? 'Mr. Sewell, in his striking sermon on Complicity,' and so forth. It would be a great hit, and it would stand a chance of sticking, like Emerson's 'Compensation.'” “Delightful! The most amusing part is that you've really a grain of business in your bushel of chaff.” Sewell wheeled about in his swivel-chair, and sat facing his guest, deeply sunken in the low easy seat he always took. “When did this famous idea occur to you?” he pursued, swinging his glasses by their cord. “About three weeks ago, at the theatre. There was one of those pieces on that make you despair of the stage, and ashamed of writing a play even to be rejected by it--a farrago of indecently amusing innuendoes and laughably vile situations, such as, if they were put into a book, would prevent its being sent through the mail. The theatre apparently can still be as filthy in suggestion as it was at the Restoration, and not shock its audiences. There were all sorts of people there that night: young girls who had come with young men for an evening's polite amusement; families; middle-aged husbands and wives; respectable-looking single women; and average bachelors. I don't think the ordinary theatrical audience is of a high grade intellectually; it's third or fourth rate; but morally it seems quite as good as other public assemblages. All the people were nicely dressed, and they sat there before that nasty mess--it was an English comedy where all the jokes turn upon the belief of the characters that their wives and husbands are the parents of illegitimate offspring--and listened with as smooth self-satisfaction as if they were not responsible for it. But all at once it occurred to me that they _were_ responsible, every one of them--as responsible as the players, as the author himself.” “Did you come out of the theatre at that point?” asked Sewell.