“Precisely as bad as that,” he retorted. “What can a fellow do if his heroine disappears as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up?”

“Gone?” I cried, with difficulty repressing my desire to laugh.

“Completely—searched high and low for her—no earthly use,” he answered. “I can’t even imagine where she is.”

“All of which, my dear Stuart,” I said, adopting a superior tone for the moment, “shows that an imagination that is worth something wouldn’t be a bad possession for a realist, after all. I know where your heroine is. She is at a little mountain house near Lake George, and she has fled there to escape your booby of a hero, whom you should have known better than to force upon a girl like Marguerite Andrews. You’re getting inartistic, my dear boy. Sacrifice something to the American girl, but don’t sacrifice your art. Just because the aforesaid girl likes her stories to end up with a wedding is no reason why you should try to condemn your heroine to life-long misery.”

Stuart looked at me with a puzzled expression for a full minute.

“How the deuce do you know anything about it?” he asked.

I immediately enlightened him. I told him every circumstance—even my suspicion as to the hero of her heart, and it seemed to please him.

“Won’t the story go if you stop it with the engagement?” I asked, after it was all over.

“Yes,” he said, thoughtfully. “But I shall not publish it. If it was all so distasteful to her as you say, I’d rather destroy it.”

“Don’t do that,” I said. “Change the heroine’s name, and nobody but ourselves will ever be the wiser.”

“I never thought of that,” said he.

“That’s because you’ve no imagination,” I retorted.

Stuart smiled. “It’s a good idea, and I’ll do it; it won’t be the truest realism, but I think I am entitled to the leeway on one lapse,” he said.

“You are,” I rejoined. “Lapse for the sake of realism. The man who never lapses is not real. There never was such a man. You might change that garden-party costume too. If you can’t think of a better combination than that, leave it to me. I’ll write to my sister and ask her to design a decent dress for that occasion.”

“Thanks,” said Stuart, with a laugh. “I accept your offer; but, I say, what was the name of the little mountain house where you found her?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “You made such an infernal row battering down my door that I came away in a hurry and forgot to ask.”

“That is unfortunate,” said Stuart. “I should have liked to go up there for a while—she might help me correct the proofs, you know.”

That’s what he said, but he didn’t deceive me. He loved her, and I began again to hope to gracious that Harley had not deceived himself and me, and that Marguerite Andrews was a bit of real life, and not a work of the imagination.

At any rate, Harley had an abiding faith in her existence, for the following Monday night he packed his case and set out for Lake George. He was going to explore, he said.

X BY WAY OF EPILOGUE

“Let, down the curtain, the farce is done.”

—Rabelais.

I suppose my story ought to end here, since Harley’s rebellious heroine has finally been subdued for the use of his publishers and the consequent declaration of dividends for the Harley exchequer; but there was an epilogue to the little farce, which nearly turned it into tragedy, from which the principals were saved by nothing short of my own ingenuity. Harley had fallen desperately in love with Marguerite Andrews, and Marguerite Andrews had fallen in love with Stuart Harley, and Harley couldn’t find her. She eluded his every effort, and he began to doubt that he had drawn her from real life, after all. She had become a Marjorie Daw to him, and the notion that he must go through life cherishing a hopeless passion was distracting to him. His book was the greatest of his successes, which was an additional cause of discomfort to him, since, knowing as he now did that his study was not a faithful portrayal of the inner life of his heroine, he felt that the laurels that were being placed upon his brow had been obtained under false pretences.

“I feel like a hypocrite,” he said, as he read an enthusiastic review of his little work from the pen of no less a person than Mr. Darrow, the high-priest of the realistic sect. “I am afraid I shall not be able to look Darrow in the eye when I meet him at the club.”

“Never fear for that, Stuart,” I said, laughing inwardly at his plight. “Brazen it out; keep a stiff upper lip, and Darrow will never know. He has insight, of course, but he can’t see as far in as you and he think.”

“It’s a devilish situation,” he cried, impatiently striding up and down the room, “that a man of my age should be so hopelessly in love with a woman he can’t find; and that he can’t find her is such a cruel sarcasm upon his literary creed! What cursed idiosyncrasy of fate is it that has brought this thing upon me?”

“It’s the punishment that fits your crime, Harley,” I said. “You’ve been rather narrow minded in your literary ideas. Possibly it will make a more tolerant critic of you hereafter, when you come to flay fellows like Balderstone for venturing to think differently from you as to the sort of books it is proper to write. He has as much right to the profits he can derive from his fancy as you have to the emoluments of your insight.”

“I’d take some comfort if I thought that she really loved me,” he said, mournfully.

“Have no doubt on that score, Stuart,” I said. “She does love you. I know that. I wish she didn’t.”

“Then why can’t I find her? Why does she hide from me?” he cried, fortunately ignoring my devoutly expressed wish, which slipped out before I knew it.

“Because she is a woman,” I replied. “Hasn’t your analytical mind told you yet that the more a woman loves a man, the harder he’s got to work to find it out and—and clinch the bargain?”

“I suppose you are right,” he said, gloomily. “But if I were a woman, and knew I was killing a man by keeping myself in hiding, I’d come out and show myself at any cost, especially if I loved him.”

“Now you are dealing in imagination, Harley,” I said; “and that never was your strong point.”

Nevertheless, he was right on one point. The hopelessness of his quest was killing Harley—not physically exactly, but emotionally, as it were. It was taking all the heart out of him, and his present state of mind was far more deplorable than when he was struggling with the book, and constantly growing worse. He tried every device to find her—the Willards were conjured up, and knew nothing; Mrs. Corwin and the twins were brought back from Europe, and refused to yield up the secret; all the powers of a realistic pen were brought to bear upon her, and yet she refused utterly to materialize.

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