“Try the tragedy, by all means: the novel would be beyond you.”
“Why, if you please?” demanded Canaris, loftily.
“Because you have neither patience nor experience enough to do it well. Goethe says: ‘In the novel it is sentiments and events that are exhibited; in the drama it is characters and deeds. The novel goes slowly forward, the drama must hasten. In the novel, some degree of scope may be allowed to chance; but it must be led and guided by the sentiments of the personages. Fate, on the other hand, which, by means of outward, unconnected circumstances, carries forward men, without their own concurrence, to an unforeseen catastrophe, can only have place in the drama. Chance may produce pathetic situations, but not tragic ones.’”
Helwyze paused there abruptly; for the memory which served him so well outran his tongue, and recalled the closing sentence of the quotation,—words which he had no mind to utter then and there,—“Fate ought always to be terrible; and it is in the highest sense tragic, when it brings into a ruinous concatenation the guilty man and the guiltless with him.”
“Then you think I could write a play?” asked Canaris, with affected carelessness.
“I think you could act one, better than imagine or write it.”
“What, I?”
“Yes, you; because you are dramatic by nature, and it is easier for you to express yourself in gesture and tone, than by written or spoken language. You were born for an actor, are fitted for it in every way, and I advise you to try it. It would pay better than poetry; and that stream may run dry.”
Gladys looked indignant at what she thought bad advice and distasteful pleasantry; but Canaris seemed struck and charmed with the new idea, protesting that he would first write, then act, his play, and prove himself a universal genius.
No more was said just then; but long afterward the conversation came back to him like an inspiration, and was the seed of a purpose which, through patient effort, bore fruit in a brilliant and successful career: for Canaris, like many another man, did not know his own strength or weakness yet, neither the true gift nor the power of evil which lay unsuspected within him.