Yes, I could see the scene clearly enough; it would provide me with excellent opportunities for dramatic dialogue; the growing uneasiness of the man with the girl’s gradual appreciation of it and wonder at the cause of it, the hope, perhaps, that it is the beginning of love. A good scene, but it would be impossible not to write a good scene with such a setting and such an episode. But, even as I saw it, I knew that it would be no good. To what climax would it work: to nothing but the old _cliché_--“I knew it all along.” It would be kept as a surprise, of course; the reader would not be told that the girl had seen the theft reflected in the looking-glass. The story would describe the progress of their courtship; the heart-searchings of the young man. “If I tell her, will she despise me?” How the machinery would creak, how often it has been done before; and at last the stage would be set for the confession. “I have something terrible to tell you, dear.” He would blurt it out and then hide his face in her lap for shame, and she would stroke his hair softly and smile. “Silly old dear,” she would say. “I knew it all along!” How trite it would be, how banal! And the fact that it might be very likely true would not in any way redeem it. We are plagiarists in life as we are in books, and there are certain motives that are now impossible in a story, although they occur in life. They have been used too often. What a weariness overcomes us when we discover in a novel of matrimonial dispute that the wife is about to become a mother, and that in consequence the hero cannot run off with his secretary. No doubt it is an affair of frequent occurrence; impending maternity frustrates an impending honeymoon. Autumn lays waste the spring. But no self-respecting novelist would allow “the little stranger” to extricate him from a difficulty. And, in the same way, no self-respecting novelist would allow a heroine “to know it all along.” It is a motive that has served its purpose well enough in its time, but when a coin has passed through many hands the signs and figures on it are worn away; it is valueless and is returned to the Mint; which is the proper place for “the little stranger” and “I knew it all along.”