"That would be the whole--I shall see in time--but it certainly isn't one of the parts. It may be the effect, but it isn't the cause, and it's for the cause I claim an interest. Do you think him an ass for what he said about the theatre--his pronouncing it a coarse art?" "To differ from you about him that reason would do," said Sherringham. "The only bad one would be one that shouldn't preserve our difference. You needn't tell me you agree with him, for frankly I don't care." "Then your passion still burns?" Nick Dormer asked. "My passion--?" "I don't mean for any individual exponent of the equivocal art: mark the guilty conscience, mark the rising blush, mark the confusion of mind! I mean the old sign one knew you best by; your permanent stall at the Francais, your inveterate attendance at _premieres_, the way you 'follow' the young talents and the old." "Yes, it's still my little hobby, my little folly if you like," Sherringham said. "I don't find I get tired of it. What will you have? Strong predilections are rather a blessing; they're simplifying. I'm fond of representation--the representation of life: I like it better, I think, than the real thing. You like it too, you'd be ready in other conditions to go in for it, in your way--so you've no right to cast the stone. You like it best done by one vehicle and I by another; and our preference on either side has a deep root in us. There's a fascination to me in the way the actor does it, when his talent--ah he must have that!--has been highly trained. Ah it must _be_ that! The things he can do in this effort at representation, with the dramatist to back him, seem to me innumerable--he can carry it to a point!--and I take great pleasure in observing them, in recognising and comparing them. It's an amusement like another--I don't pretend to call it by any exalted name, but in this vale of friction it will serve. One can lose one's self in it, and it has the recommendation--in common, I suppose, with the study of the other arts--that the further you go in it the more you find. So I go rather far, if you will. But is it the principal sign one knows me by?" Peter abruptly asked. "Don't be ashamed of it," Nick returned--"else it will be ashamed of you. I ought to discriminate. You're distinguished among my friends and relations by your character of rising young diplomatist; but you know I always want the final touch to the picture, the last fruit of analysis. Therefore I make out that you're conspicuous among rising young diplomatists for the infatuation you describe in such pretty terms." "You evidently believe it will prevent my ever rising very high. But pastime for pastime is it any idler than yours?" "Than mine?"