"Why not?"
"Because the only thing possible for a man to say about them is what his imagination dictates. He'll never learn any more concerning women than that."
"Imagination is not literature," said Brown junior, with polite toleration.
"Imagination is often the truer truth," said the old gentleman.
"Father, that is rot."
"Yes, my son—and it is almost Good Literature, too. Go ahead, shake us if you like. But, if you do, you'll come back married."[118]
XIII
So Brown, who was nourishing a theory, shook his family and, requiring mental solitude to develop his idea, he went to Verbena Inlet. Not to the enormous and expensive caravansary swarming with wealth, ennui, envy, and fashion; not even to its sister hotel similarly infested. But to West Verbena, where for a mile along the white shell road modest hotels, boarding houses, and cottages nestled behind mosquito screens under the dingy cabbage-palmettos.