If ever he used it, he
would on no account use it alone; he would say, "Intellectual and all
that sort of thing!" with an air of pushing violently away from him
everything that the phrase implied. The notion of baptizing a theatre
with the fearsome word horrified him. Still, he had to maintain
his nerve and his repute. So he drank some champagne, and smiled
nonchalantly as the imperturbable duellist smiles while the pistols
are being examined.
"Well--" he murmured.
"You see," Marrier broke in, with the smile ecstatic, almost dancing
on his chair. "There's no use in compromise. Compromise is and always
has been the curse of this country. The unintellectual drahma is
dead--dead. Naoobody can deny that. All the box-offices in the West
are proclaiming it--"
"Should you call your play intellectual, Mr. Sachs?" Edward Henry
inquired across the table.
"I scarcely know," said Mr. Seven Sachs, calmly. "I know I've played
it myself fifteen hundred and two times, and that's saying nothing of
my three subsidiary companies on the road."
"What _is_ Mr. Sachs's play?" asked Carlo Trent, fretfully.
"Don't you know, Carlo?" Rose Euclid patted him. "'Overheard.'"
"Oh! I've never seen it."
"But it was on all the hoardings!"
"I never read the hoardings," said Carlo. "Is it in verse?"
"No, it isn't," Mr. Seven Sachs briefly responded.
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