“I am glad I did,” was the response, “for it gives me the chance of refuting them. It is not very agreeable for us to have people saying in public that we lack the essential elements of courage.” “Well, well, well!” said Raeburn with brusque heartiness, “a word spoken is a bullet fired. No use pretending you didn’t touch the trigger, eh?” “But is it not unwise to tamper with firearms when you are not acquainted with their mechanism?” Raeburn coloured a trifle and remarked, “That’s hardly applicable to me, Mr. Cardomay.” “I was merely enlarging a metaphor you introduced.” “Ah—I see. Yes. But how about a drink before we start? You won’t refuse a whisky, eh?” “You may find it hard to believe, but I shall refuse; for oddly enough, and at the risk of destroying one of your illusions, I do not drink alcohol.” “Ha! Well, that’s a score to you.” “I wish I could shatter other beliefs as easily. You said we of the stage have no real experience of life, death and danger, and could not cope with it if we had.” “I did.” “I, on the other hand, maintain that we have a greater experience than almost any other class. We must know what to do for every occasion, for otherwise we would need at once to seek a fresh means of livelihood—or starve. We live amidst a turmoil of ever-changing emotions——” “Acted emotions!” “But very real to us. What we depict is merely what we have known or seen or felt. All our lives we are moving in different scenes and different places—we are rubbing shoulders week by week with different men, different women, and human events, both great and small, which even you, with your battle-field experiences, would find it hard to outrival.” Raeburn made no reply, but the angle of his nostrils was distinctly sceptical. “Yes, all the time we are drawing our experiences—learning our lesson from the book of life. A child pricks its finger—and we can study from the child’s mother the measure of sympathy she offers for so small a sorrow, yes, and deduce therefrom how great her sympathy and concern would be if the pricked finger were, instead, a mortal malady. There is no happening too small to be of use to us, to help us with our lesson; and every hour of the day or night we are piecing together the minute mosaic which goes to fashion the broad patterns of our art.” “H’m! That’s all very nice and very interesting, but forgive me if I don’t exactly see what it’s leading up to.” “Merely this: that from the lesson we have learnt, we, of all people, are to be relied upon to do the right thing in any emergency.” Captain Raeburn found the loophole he had been seeking, and fired his shaft unceremoniously. “Then why, my dear sir, play that last scene in ‘The Flag’ in the manner you do? Surely you don’t imagine a Colonel would really behave like that under similar conditions?” “Although I have never been in a battle, I can see no reason against his doing so.” “You can take it from me that he wouldn’t.”