“Seven,” said I.
He cleared his throat and the kindest smile came into his eyes.
“They tell me at my publisher’s that I slowed up my last book badly—by taking a woman’s soul out for an airing—just a little invalid kind of a soul, too. Souls don’t wake up in American novels any more. You can’t do much more in print nowadays than you can do on canvas—I mean movie canvas. Of course, you can paint soul, but you can’t photograph it—that’s the point. The movies have put imagination to death. We have to compete. You can’t see a soul without imagination—or some sort of madness—and the good people who want imagination in their novels don’t buy ’em. They rent or borrow. It’s the crowds that go to the movies that have bright colored strings of American novels, as the product runs—on their shelves—little shiny varnished shelves—red carpets—painted birds on the lampshades and callers in the evenings....”
There was a good silence.
“Do you know,” he said presently, “I’ve about come to the conclusion that a novel must play altogether on sensuous tissue to catch the crowd? Look at the big movie pictures—the actors make love like painted animals.... I’m not humorous or ironical. It’s a big problem to me——”
“Why, you can’t touch the hem of the garment of a real love story until you are off the sensuous,” I offered. “The Quest only begins there. I’m not averse to that. It belongs in part. We are sensuous beings—in part. But I am averse to letting it contain all. Why, the real glow comes to a romance—when a woman’s soul wakes up. There’s a hotter fire than that which glows blood-red——”
“I know,” he said quickly. “I know. That blood-red stuff is the cheapest thing in the world, but that’s where the great thing called human interest lives.... I’m sure of this story until her soul wakes up. She stirs in her sleep, and I see a giantess ahead—the kind of woman who could whistle to me or to you—and we’d follow her out—dazed by the draw of her. They are in the world. I reckon souls do wake up—but I can feel the public dropping off every page after two hundred—like chilled bees—dropping off page by page—and the old familiar battle ahead. I can feel that tight look about the eyes again——”
“Are you going to put her soul back to sleep?” I asked, as we turned again into the crowd.
I wasn’t the least lordly in this question. I knew his struggle, and something of the market, too. I was thinking of tradesmen—how easy it is to be a tradesman; in fact, how difficult it is to be otherwise—when the very passion of the racial soul moves in the midst of trade.
“She’s beautiful—even asleep,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to give her something. I’m building a house. She’s in the comprehension of the little varnished shelves—asleep.”