«
    »And for that very same reason I delight in them,« cried Biffen. »You are
repelled by what has injured you; I am attracted by it. This divergence is very
interesting; but for that, we should have resembled each other so closely. You
know that by temper we are rabid idealists, both of us.«
    »I suppose so.«
    »But let me go on. I want, among other things, to insist upon the fateful
power of trivial incidents. No one has yet dared to do this seriously. It has
often been done in farce, and that's why farcical writing so often makes one
melancholy. You know my stock instances of the kind of thing I mean. There was
poor Allen, who lost the most valuable opportunity of his life because he hadn't
a clean shirt to put on; and Williamson, who would probably have married that
rich girl but for the grain of dust that got into his eye and made him unable to
say or do anything at the critical moment.«
    Reardon burst into a roar of laughter.
    »There you are!« cried Biffen, with friendly annoyance. »You take the
conventional view. If you wrote of these things you would represent them as
laughable.«
    »They are laughable,« asserted the other, »however serious to the persons
concerned. The mere fact of grave issues in life depending on such paltry things
is monstrously ludicrous. Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing
a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy with mocking laughter.«
    »That's all very well, but it isn't an original view. I am not lacking in
sense of humour, but I prefer to treat these aspects of life from an impartial
standpoint. The man who laughs takes the side of a cruel omnipotence, if one can
imagine such a thing. I want to take no side at all; simply to say, Look, this
is the kind of thing that happens.«
    »I admire your honesty, Biffen,« said Reardon, sighing. »You will never sell
work of this kind, yet you have the courage to go on with it because you believe
in it.«
    »I don't know; I may perhaps sell it some day.«
    »In the meantime,« said Reardon, laying down his pipe, »suppose we eat a
morsel of something. I'm rather hungry.«
    In the early days of his marriage Reardon was wont to offer the friends who
looked in on Sunday evening
