“Dear,” said Olivia, “we have much to be thankful for.” “You and I?” he queried. “Our generation. We live in the sun. No longer under the shadow of the red flannel petticoat.” Rapturously he called her a marvel among women. Olivia’s common sense discounted the hyperbole; but she loved his tribute to her sally of wit. The book slipped to the floor, while she began an argument on the morality of plagiarism. How far was a man justified in stealing another man’s idea, working up another man’s material? His sudden and excited defence of the plagiarist surprised her. He rose, strode about the room and, talking, grew eloquent; quoted Shakespeare as the great exemplar of the artist who took his goods from everywhere he found them. Olivia, knowing his joy in conversational fence, made smiling attack. “In the last three hundred years we have developed a literary conscience.” “A commercial matter,” he declared. “A question of copyright. I granted that. You have no right to exploit another man’s ideas to his material loss. But take a case like this”—he paced before her for a few seconds—“on the spur of the moment. It must have happened a thousand times in the War. An unknown dead man just a kilometre away from a bleak expanse of waste covered with thousands of dead men. Some one happens upon him. Searches him for identification. Finds nothing of any use or interest save a little notebook with leaves of the thinnest paper next his skin. And he glances through the book and sees at once that it is no ordinary diary of war—discomfort of billets, so many miles’ march, morale of the men and so forth—but something quite different. He puts it in his pocket. For all that the modern world is concerned, the dead man is as lost as any skeleton dug up in an ancient Egyptian grave-yard. The living man, when he has leisure, reads the closely written manuscript book, finds it contains rough notes of wonderful experiences, thoughts, imaginings. But all in a jumble, ill expressed, chaotic. Suppose, now, the finder, a man with the story-teller’s gift, weaves a wonderful thrilling tale out of this material. Who is injured? Nobody. On the contrary, the world is the richer.” “If he were honest, he ought to tell the truth in a preface,” said Olivia. Triona laughed. “Who would believe him? The trick of writing false prefaces in order to give verisimilitude is so overworked that people won’t believe the genuine ones.” “I suppose that’s so,” she acquiesced. Her interest in the argument was only a reflection of his. She was far more eager to resume the interrupted reading of _Philaster_. “It’s lovely that we always see things in the same way,” said he, sitting down again by her side. Besides all this delightful work and play there was the practical future to be considered. They could not live for ever at “Quien Sabe” on The Point, nor could they live at the Lord knows where anywhere else. They must have a home.