Paul smiled. "You are quite right. If I don't write a book it will prove that I can't write a book. But, all the same, I hope and believe I can."
"I'm afraid I must talk a bit to the man on my other side," said Isabel. "I don't want to, but he keeps clearing his throat like a clock that is going to strike, and I cannot any longer disregard the sign."
"I suppose I also ought to exchange pleasure for duty, and endeavour to converse with the old lady on my left."
"You ought to change new lamps for old, you mean," suggested Isabel. "Allow me to express a hope that the old one will be as brilliant as the new."
"It is unwise to hope for impossibilities, and generally leads to disappointment," replied Paul.
After Paul and Isabel had duly fulfilled their duty to their neighbours, Isabel said: "You mustn't be in too great a hurry to begin your book. Experience, as well as genius, is required for the writing of books."
"That is very true, and that is why I am waiting. I don't want to seem conceited, but I am speaking candidly to you now, and I feel and know I have the power to write what would be worth reading. But where I am weak is in the experience of life. I have always lived in a small world, and small worlds—though perhaps the most comfortable places of residence—are not good training-grounds or seminaries of learning."
"My experience is that small worlds and big worlds are pretty much alike," replied Isabel. "I have lived in both, and I don't see much difference."
"I don't mean that small worlds are really less interesting than big ones. Human nature is, of course, the same in both; and it is human nature that is the most interesting thing in life. As you say, the deeper things are the same in small worlds as in great ones, but their outer aspects differ in different cases; and the more cases one sees, the wider are one's sympathies."
"But seeing a lot of people is not knowing them," objected Isabel. "We are all more or less like the Man in the Iron Mask, and take abundant pains to hide our real faces from our fellows."