"The Author," I pleaded, "does not customarily explain why he elects to do anything."
"None the less, I am sure I would have made a most remunerative protagonist. My inconsistencies are amusing: my whimsies, although decorous, are flavorsome: my morals are, if not exactly beyond reproach—"
"Beyond hope, anyway," I suggested.
"—And, in short, I am inclined to think that, here again, the Author does not quite understand just what he is about."
"Upon my word," said I, "you touch a truth—"
"Each has his métier," the little man admitted, modestly. "The flea leaps well, most senators carry their liquor well, whereas the clergy, one deduces from the numerousness of their children—"
§ 2
"I mean," I interrupted, "that once you talked to me all through one fine spring night. It was about Romance you talked—"
"I remember," Charteris stated, with a grin. "I can well remember how, in that terrible dawn, after all my lovely rhetoric, you thought I had been explaining how books ought to be written."
"Well, I do not think that now. I incline, rather, to think you were talking about man's attitude toward life and the universe. I am sure, though, that in all your speaking of books you left unsettled the question you raised a moment since, as to what the Author is about? For what reason, in fine, and with what reward in view, does any author write his books?"