Of course there is only one thing for a novelist to be, and that is himself. But one has to attain a certain age to know that. To try to write in anyone else's manner is fatal. To novelists who have not the courage or the conceit to be themselves, but who try to infuse a popular element into their work, I would give this advice, "Do what you can as well as you can, and let the others do what you can't, without envying them." And when they have succeeded I would go to them again and say, "Never have the faintest fear of a copyist." Devon and Sankville not only were novelists but successful dramatists too; but Speyde had had no luck with the stage. "How you can do it, I can't think," he said. "It's a new language, a new world. Everything that one has learnt has to be forgotten. The things that should be whispered have to be shouted. At least, that is what the stage-managers and producers say, and since you are in their hands you have to believe it. But no more of it for me; I have done with limelight. Of course it's all right for Devon, because he's a homilist. Anyone with a lesson to teach can disregard conventions or accept them." "That's all very well," said Devon, "but I must decline to be isolated as the one dramatist who has a moral to enforce. All the best dramatists have." "Of course," said Sankville, "every Englishman is a Puritan at heart, in so far as he prefers that everyone else should be virtuous. Hence when he writes a play it naturally makes for virtue. The study of our neighbour's conduct is the national profession. It also forms the material of every play and every novel." "And every newspaper," said Leigh. "Of course--every newspaper, and every weekly review, doesn't it, Dabney?" Sankville replied. "I suppose so," Dabney said; "but, at any rate, newspaper men don't pretend to do more than record results. They make no claim, as you novelists and dramatists do, to be able to read the heart and discern the springs of action and all the rest of it." "Well, and can't we?" Sankville asked.