"Can you tell me what is the origin of the decay of realism? Can you tell me that?" Suddenly, in the ensuing silence, there was a click and a tiny electric lamp shot its beam. The hand which held the lamp was the hand of Carlo Trent. He raised it and flashed the trembling ray in the inquirer’s face. Edward Henry recalled Carlo’s objection to excessive electricity in the private drawing-room at Wilkins’s. "Why do you ask such a question?" Carlo Trent challenged the enquirer, brandishing the lamp. "I ask you why do you ask it?" The other also drew forth a lamp and, as it were, cocked it and let it off at the features of Carlo Trent. And thus the two stood, statuesque and lit, surrounded by shadowy witnesses of the discussion. The door creaked and yet another figure, silhouetted for an instant against the illumination of the stage, descended into the discussion-chamber. Carlo Trent tripped towards the newcomer, bent with his lamp, lifted delicately the hem of the newcomer’s trousers, and gazed at the colour of his sock, which was blue. "All right!" said he. "The champagne and sandwiches are served," said the newcomer. "You’ve not answered me, sir," Carlo Trent faced once more his opponent in the discussion. "You’ve not answered me." Whereupon, the lamps being extinguished, they all filed forth, the door swung to of its own accord, shutting out the sound of babble from the stage, and Edward Henry and Elsie April were left silent and solitary to the sole ray of the street-lamp. All the Five Towns shrewdness in Edward Henry’s character, all the husband in him, all the father in him, all the son in him, leapt to his lips and tried to say to Elsie, "Shall _we_ go and inspect the champagne and sandwiches too?" and failed to say these incantatory words of salvation! And the romantic adventurous fool in him rejoiced at their failure. For he was adventurously happy in his propinquity to that simple and sincere creature. He was so happy, and his heart was so active, that he even made no caustic characteristic comment on the singular behaviour of the beings who had just abandoned them to their loneliness. He was also proud because he was sitting alone nearly in the dark with a piquant and wealthy, albeit amateur, actress who had just participated in a triumph at which the spiritual aristocracy of London had assisted. VI.