"I'm sure I don't know," said Williams modestly.
"I don't know either, though I read them myself sometimes—I don't know why. They're all very well in their way—if you care for that sort of book—but the things you tell about, Williams, never could have happened. I'm not knocking you; I'm a realist, that's all. And when I read a short story by you in which a young man sees a[196] pretty girl, and begins to talk to her without being introduced to her, and then marries her before luncheon—and finds he's married a Balkan Princess—good-night! I just wonder why people stand for your books; that's all."
"So do I," said Williams, much embarrassed. "I wouldn't stand for them myself."
"Why," continued Green warmly, "I read a story of yours in some magazine the other day, in which a young man sees a pretty girl for the first time in his life and is married to her inside of three quarters of an hour! And I ask you, Williams, how you would feel after spending fifteen cents on such a story?"
"I'm terribly sorry, old man," murmured Williams. "Here's your fifteen—if you like——"
"Dammit," said Green indignantly, "it isn't that they're not readable stories! I had fifteen cents' worth all right. But it makes a man sore to see what happens to the young men in your stories—and all the queens they collect—and then to go about town and never see anything of that sort!"
"There are millions of pretty girls in town," ventured Williams. "I don't think I exaggerate in that respect."
"But they'd call an officer if young men in real[197] life behaved as they do in your stories. As a matter of fact and record, there's no more romance in New York than there is in the annual meeting of the British Academy of Ancient Assyrian Inscriptions. And you know it, Williams!"
"I think it depends on the individual man," said Williams timidly.
"How?"