He glanced quickly at me as a man does from ahead when his car is pressing the limit.
"Ever have a book fail?" he asked.
"Seven," said I.
He cleared his throat and the kindest smile came into his eyes:
"They tell me at my publishers' 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. 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-coloured strings of American novels as the product runs—on their shelves—little shiny varnished shelves—red carpets—painted birds on the lamp-shades and callers in the evenings."
There was a good silence.
"Do you know," he added 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 burns blood-red——"
"I know," he said quickly. "I know. That blood-red stuff is the cheapest thing in the world.... 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 a 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 for me. I can feel that tight look of poverty about the eyes again——"