"Do you give your name?"
"Certainly not—unless I were a lord. No. I think I shall pass for a woman: a young girl, perhaps; daughter of a bishop; or the divorced wife of a member of parliament."
"I should like to hear some of your work. I am interested."
"I know you are. We have a bet, you know; but I have found out a strange thing in correcting my novel—that you can make a whole story out of any five chapters."
"No, no. You're quizzing."
"Not I. I tell you, out of any five chapters, of any five novels, you make a very good short tale; and the odd thing is, it doesn't the least matter which chapters you choose. With a very little sagacity, the reader sees the whole; and, let me tell you, the great fault of story-writing is telling too much, and leaving too little for the reader to supply to himself. Recollect what I told you about altering the names of all the characters, and, with that single proviso, read chapter fifteen of the first volume of this——"
Jack handed me a volume, turned down at the two-hundredth page, and I read what he told me to call the first chapter of "Love and Glory."
THE WILDERNESS.
"A tangled thicket is a holy place
For contemplation lifting to the stars
Its passionate eyes, and breathing paradise
Within a sanctified solemnity."
Old Play