Now the point is--Can I
be held responsible for that scene? It is not my fault that I have
mentally seen a private soldier dying in hospital. The whole thing
was involuntary."
"Very extraordinary views!" muttered my father.
I shrugged my shoulders in silence, and called up Nous to give him
my untouched dinner.
"The best joke of it is, too," I said, suspending a strip of sirloin
over the collie's nose, "the publishers admit if I had less talent
they would print my things. I could not understand why my 'Laura
Dean' was refused, so I went down to the publishers to try and find
out. I saw the reader himself, and an awfully nice fellow he is,
too. In reply to my question, he said the objection to the book was
that it dealt with a wife leaving her husband. I stared at him in
amazement. 'But, great Scott!' I said, 'that's a good old-fashioned
theme enough. It's as old as the hills. It's the subject of--' and I
gave him a list of about a dozen eminent novels. 'Yes,' he admitted.
'But they are not written in the same way.' 'Is there anything
coarse or low in the writing?' 'Oh, no! I should not say that!'
'Well, what is the matter with it, then?' 'The thing is too much
brought before you. Of course, in these books you have mentioned the
wife runs away, but it does not make much impression. You have put
it all so forcibly, and given the characters and episode so much
life, and driven the idea of her infidelity so far home to one,
that, well, it becomes a different thing--one realises it.
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