"Anyway, I shall see you before you leave. I'm home to-day the whole afternoon and evening. You will find a man who has resolutely turned away from the questions of the day and devoted himself again to the eternal problems, death and love.... Do you believe in death, by-the-bye, Nürnberger? I am not asking you about love." "That somewhat cheap joke from a man in your position," said Nürnberger, "makes me suspect that in spite of your very dignified demeanour my criticism has...." "No, Nürnberger, I swear to you that I am not wounded. I have rather a comfortable sensation of the whole thing being finished with." "Finished with, why so? It is still quite possible that I've made a mistake, and that this very piece, which I didn't think quite a success, will have a success on the stage which will make you into a millionaire. I should be deeply grieved if on account of my criticism, which may be very far from being authoritative...." "Quite so, quite so, Nürnberger. We must all of us always admit the possibility that we may be mistaken. And the next time I'll write another piece, and one with the following title too: '_Nobody's going to take me in_,' and you shall be the hero of it, Nürnberger." Nürnberger smiled. "... I? That means you'll take a man whom you imagine you know, that you'll try to describe those sides of his character which suit your game--that you'll suppress others which are no use to you, and the result...." "The result," interrupted Heinrich, "will be a portrait taken by a mad photographer with a spoilt camera during an earthquake and an eclipse of the sun. Is that right, or is there anything missing?" "The psychology ought to be exhaustive," said Nürnberger. Heinrich took his leave in boisterous spirits and went away with his rolled-up manuscript. When he had gone George remarked: "His good temper strikes me as a bit of a pose, you know." "Do you think so? I have always found him in remarkably good form lately." "In really good form? Do you seriously think so? After what he has gone through?" "Why not? Men who are so almost exclusively self-centred as he is get over emotional troubles with surprising quickness. Characters of that type, and as a matter of fact other kinds of men as well, feel the slightest physical discomfort far more acutely than any kind of sentimental pain, even the faithlessness and death of the persons they happen to love. It comes no doubt from the fact that every emotional pain flatters our vanity somehow or other, and that you can't say the same thing about an attack of typhoid or a catarrh in the stomach. Then there is this additional point about artistic people, for while catarrh of the stomach provides positively no copy at all (at any rate that used to be reasonably certain a short time ago) you can get anything you jolly well like out of your emotional pains, from lyric poems down to works on philosophy."