The nave avowal set the heart and intellect of Mr. Smith afire. But he only dropped his well-shaped head and didn"t look at her. Which was rather nice of him.
"Romance," he said after a moment or two, "is all well enough. But real life is stranger than fiction."
"Not in the British Isles," she said with decision. "It _is_ tea and curates and kennels and stables--as our writers depict it."
"No, you are mistaken! Everywhere it is stranger than fiction," he insisted--"more surprising, more charming, more wonderful. Even here in America--here in Florida--here on this tiny point of sand jutting into the Atlantic, life is more beautiful, more miraculous than any fiction ever written."
"Why do you say that?" she asked.
"I am afraid I can"t tell you why I say it."
"Why can"t you tell me?"
"Only in books could what I might have to tell you be logically told--and listened to----"
"Only in books? But books in America reflect actual life," she said.
"Therefore, you can tell me what you have to tell. Can"t you?"
"Can I?" he asked.
"Yes...." Far in the inmost recesses of her calm and maiden heart something stirred, and her breath ceased for a second.... Innocent, not comprehending why her breath missed, she looked at him with the question still in her blue eyes.
"Shall I tell you why real life is stranger than fiction?" he asked unsteadily.
"Tell me--yes--if----"
"It is stranger," he said, "because it is often more headlong and romantic. Shall we take ourselves, for example?"
"You and me?"
"Yes. To ill.u.s.trate what I mean."
She inclined her head, her eyes fixed on his.
"Very well," he said. "Even in the most skillfully constructed story--supposing that you and I were hero and heroine--no author would have the impudence to make us avow our love within a few minutes of our first meeting."
"No," she said.
"In the first chapter," he continued, "certain known methods of construction are usually followed. Time is essential--the lapse of time.
How to handle it cleverly is a novelist"s business. But even the most skillful novelist would scarcely dare make me, for example, tell you that I am in love with you. Would he?"
"No," she said.
"And in real life, even if a man does fall in love so suddenly, he does not usually say so, does he?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"But he _does_ fall in love sometimes more suddenly than in fiction. And occasionally he declares himself. In real life this actually happens.
And _that_ is stranger than any fiction. Isn"t it?"
"Yes," she said.
"One kind of fiction," he continued very unsteadily, "is that in which, when he falls in love--he doesn"t say so--I mean in such a case as ours--supposing I had already fallen in love with you. I could not say so to you. No man could say it to any girl. He remains mute. He observes very formally every convention. He smiles, hat in hand, as the girl pa.s.ses out of his life forever.... Doesn"t he? And that is one kind of fiction--the tragic kind."
She had been looking down at the book in her lap. After a moment she lifted her troubled eyes to his.
"I do--not know what men do--in real life," she said. "What would they do in the--_other_ kind of fiction?"
"In the other kind of fiction there would be another chapter."
"Yes.... You mean that for us there is only this one chapter."
"Only one chapter."
"Or--might it not be called a short story, Mr. Smith?"
"Yes--one kind of short story."
"Which kind?"
"The kind that ends unhappily."
"But this one is not going to end unhappily, is it?"
"You are about to walk out of the story when it ends."
"Yes--but----" She bit her lip, flushed and perplexed, already dreadfully confused between the personal and the impersonal--between fact and fancy.
"You see," he said, "the short story which deals with--love--can end only as ours is going to end--or the contrary."
"How is ours going to end?" she asked with candid curiosity.
"It must be constructed very carefully," he said, "because this is realism."
"You must be very skillful, too," she said. "I do not see how you are to avoid----"
"What?"
"A--an--unhappy--ending."
He looked gravely at his sand castle. "No," he said, "I don"t see how it can be avoided."
After a long silence she murmured, half to herself:
"Still, this is America--after all."
He shrugged, still studying his sand castle.