If you didn't possess
them you wouldn't desire them! As they say, as they say--"
"As they say?"
"About love. Some novelist does. To be conscious in any
way toward it is to be fatally infected."
"What novelist?" Advena asked, with shining interest.
"Some novelist. I--I can't have invented it," he replied,
somewhat confounded. He got up and walked to the window,
where it stood open upon the verandah. "I don't write
novels," he said.
"Perhaps you live them," suggested Advena. "I mean, of
course," she added, laughing, "the highest class of
fiction."
"Heaven forbid!"
"Why Heaven forbid? You are sensitive to life, and a
great deal of it comes into your scope. You can't see a
thing truly without feeling it; you can't feel it without
living it. I don't write novels either, but I
experience--whole publishers' lists."
"That means," he said, smiling, "that your vision is up
to date. You see the things, the kind of things that you
read of next day. The modern moral sophistications--?"
"Don't make me out boastful," she replied. "I often do."
"Mine would be old-fashioned, I am afraid. Old stories
of pain"--he looked out upon the lawn, white where the
chestnut blossoms were dropping, and his eyes were just
wistful enough to stir her adoration--"and of heroism
that is quite dateless in the history of the human heart.
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