"Printed everywhere! The novel was called 'Amaris,' and there were no headlines. The page-tops were just Amaris, Amaris, Amaris all through."
"What is 'Amaris'? And how on earth did you manage?..."
"Stop a bit, or I shall want Gargantua's mouth. 'Amaris' was a name the author concocted, like Mrs. Kenwig's 'Morleena.' He wanted to be quite sure his heroine's name had never been used for a novel before, so that he could make it the title. But it had, with a Latin subtitle, in which dulcibus and amaris were put in contrast...."
"Never mind the Latin," said Judith. "What did it mean?"
"It amounted to the question, 'Is Life most full of bitter things or sweet?' and the title answered the question. It might have been called 'Dulcibus' for any light it threw on the problem. But it wouldn't have sold. Nothing sells without a snarl or a howl or a pig-sty in it."
"But I'm so curious to know how you got over the difficulty."
"Simple enough! We turned it into 'Tamarisk.'... How? Why, of course, by printing a 'T' at the beginning and a 'K' at the end. It cost something to run the sheets carefully through again, but not so much as burning them."
"What was there about 'Tamarisk' in the book?"
"Not a word till I rewrote the first dozen pages. I had to read that blessed book through till I nearly knew it by heart, in order to work out the idea. But it seemed all right when it was done. I was rather proud of it."
"I dare say it was tremendously clever. But how was it done? That's what I want to know."