“Precisely as bad as that,” he retorted. “What can a fellow do if his heroine disappears as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up?”
“Gone?” I cried, with difficulty repressing my desire to laugh.
“Completely—searched high and low for her—no earthly use,” he answered. “I can’t even imagine where she is.”
“All of which, my dear Stuart,” I said, adopting a superior tone for the moment, “shows that an imagination that is worth something wouldn’t be a bad possession for a realist, after all. I know where your heroine is. She is at a little mountain house near Lake George, and she has fled there to escape your booby of a hero, whom you should have known better than to force upon a girl like Marguerite Andrews. You’re getting inartistic, my dear boy. Sacrifice something to the American girl, but don’t sacrifice your art. Just because the aforesaid girl likes her stories to end up with a wedding is no reason why you should try to condemn your heroine to life-long misery.”
Stuart looked at me with a puzzled expression for a full minute.
“How the deuce do you know anything about it?” he asked.
I immediately enlightened him. I told him every circumstance—even my suspicion as to the hero of her heart, and it seemed to please him.
“Won’t the story go if you stop it with the engagement?” I asked, after it was all over.
“Yes,” he said, thoughtfully. “But I shall not publish it. If it was all so distasteful to her as you say, I’d rather destroy it.”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “Change the heroine’s name, and nobody but ourselves will ever be the wiser.”