"Well--!" I explained: and I went on, "I mean, of course, that is, after I had given the matter real consideration--" Then I summed it all up even more completely. "But, come now, Charteris! you, as a writer yourself, know how these submitted notions by and by come back from the cellar of what we--well, as one might say, fraudulently--term the subconscious; and come back either transmuted into something quite different or else marked Not Available for Our Present Needs." He shook his head. "In the fidgeting face of such tergiversation I can but observe that, really, of all things! For, when one considers the persons whom you have elected to give a whole book to, civility must seek refuge in aposiopesis. Me, look you, me, you have passed over in favor of a moonstruck Kennaston and of that fat little Woods widow!" "The Author," I pleaded, "does not customarily explain why he elects to do anything." "None the less, I am sure I would have made a most remunerative protagonist. My inconsistencies are amusing: my whimsies, although decorous, are flavorsome: my morals are, if not exactly beyond reproach--" "Beyond hope, anyway," I suggested. "--And, in short, I am inclined to think that, here again, the Author does not quite understand just what he is about." "Upon my word," said I, "you touch a truth--" "Each has his métier," the little man admitted, modestly. "The flea leaps well, most senators carry their liquor well, whereas the clergy, one deduces from the numerousness of their children--" § 2 "I mean," I interrupted, "that once you talked to me all through one fine spring night. It was about Romance you talked--" "I remember," Charteris stated, with a grin. "I can well remember how, in that terrible dawn, after all my lovely rhetoric, you thought I had been explaining how books ought to be written." "Well, I do not think that now. I incline, rather, to think you were talking about man's attitude toward life and the universe. I am sure, though, that in all your speaking of books you left unsettled the question you raised a moment since, as to what the Author is about? For what reason, in fine, and with what reward in view, does any author write his books?" "I voiced for you most plainly and mellifluously the principles of his economy--" "Yes: I remember your high observations as to Villon and Marlowe. The artist, you argued, is unwilling to be wasted; and he alone manages--sometimes--to perpetuate himself where everybody else perishes. You were quite eloquent about the artist's immortality. Only, I remember too that, toward the end, you admitted a considerable distinction. In art, you cried, it may so happen that the thing which a man makes may endure to be misunderstood and gabbled over, but it is not the man himself. We retain--I am still paying you the handsome tribute of exact quotation,--we retain the _Iliad_, but oblivion has swallowed Homer so deep that many question if he ever existed at all."