Officer Garroway was not a man of forceful character. He bowed his head meekly before the storm.
"I see what you mean, Mr. Beamish."
"I should hope you did. I have put it plainly enough. I dislike intensely this modern tendency on the part of young writers to concentrate on corpses and sewers and despair. They should be writing about Love. I tell thee Love is nature's second sun, Garroway, causing a spring of virtues where he shines. All love is sweet, given or returned. Common as light is love, and its familiar voice wearies not ever. True love's the gift which God has given to man alone beneath the heaven. It is not—mark this, Garroway—it is not fantasy's hot fire, whose wishes soon as granted die. It liveth not in fierce desire, with fierce desire it does not die. It is the secret sympathy, the silver link, the silken tie, which heart to heart and mind to mind in body and in soul can bind."
"Yes, sir. Exactly, Mr. Beamish. I quite see that."
"Then go away and rewrite your poem on the lines I have indicated."
"Yes, Mr. Beamish." The policeman paused. "Before I go, there is just one other thing...."
"There is no other thing in the world that matters except love."
"Well, sir, there are the motion-pictures, to which you made a brief allusion just now, and...."
"Garroway," said Hamilton Beamish, "I trust that you are not going to tell me that, after all I have done to try to make you a poet, you wish to sink to writing motion-picture scenarios?"
"No, sir. No, indeed. But some little time ago I happened to purchase a block of stock in a picture company, and so far all my efforts to dispose of it have proved fruitless. I have begun to entertain misgivings as to the value of these shares, and I thought that, while I was here, I would ask you if you knew anything about them."