"I think I would have returned it—in that—chapter." Then, for the first time, she blushed.
The naïve avowal set the heart and intellect of Mr. Smith afire. But he only dropped his well-shaped head and didn't look at her. Which was rather nice of him.[98]
"Romance," he said after a moment or two, "is all well enough. But real life is stranger than fiction."
"Not in the British Isles," she said with decision. "It is tea and curates and kennels and stables—as our writers depict it."
"No, you are mistaken! Everywhere it is stranger than fiction," he insisted—"more surprising, more charming, more wonderful. Even here in America—here in Florida—here on this tiny point of sand jutting into the Atlantic, life is more beautiful, more miraculous than any fiction ever written."
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"I am afraid I can't tell you why I say it."
"Why can't you tell me?"
"Only in books could what I might have to tell you be logically told—and listened to——"
"Only in books? But books in America reflect actual life," she said. "Therefore, you can tell me what you have to tell. Can't you?"