"In the first chapter," he continued, "certain known methods of construction are usually followed. Time is essential—the lapse of time. How to handle it cleverly is a novelist's business. But even the most skillful novelist would scarcely dare make me, for example, tell you that I am in love with you. Would he?"
"No," she said.
"And in real life, even if a man does fall in[100] love so suddenly, he does not usually say so, does he?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"But he does fall in love sometimes more suddenly than in fiction. And occasionally he declares himself. In real life this actually happens. And that is stranger than any fiction. Isn't it?"
"Yes," she said.
"One kind of fiction," he continued very unsteadily, "is that in which, when he falls in love—he doesn't say so—I mean in such a case as ours—supposing I had already fallen in love with you. I could not say so to you. No man could say it to any girl. He remains mute. He observes very formally every convention. He smiles, hat in hand, as the girl passes out of his life forever.... Doesn't he? And that is one kind of fiction—the tragic kind."
She had been looking down at the book in her lap. After a moment she lifted her troubled eyes to his.
"I do—not know what men do—in real life," she said. "What would they do in the—other kind of fiction?"
"In the other kind of fiction there would be another chapter."[101]