Now as I come to that last night of all, a night that was as though set on a stage by a cunning but reckless craftsman of the drama, and as I look every way I may at the happenings that were staged on the platform of that night, I do sincerely thank my stars that it is no novel I have set my hand to, but a faithful chronicle of events. For it would seem that the novelist, so he is an honest man and loves his craft, must work always under a great disadvantage in his earnest wish to tell of life truthfully; since, as the old, old saying is, he never can dare to be so improbable as life. He may, to be sure, be as dingy as life, according to the mode of the day, or he may even achieve the impossible and be more dingy than life, also according to the mode of the day, but to be as improbable as life will be as far beyond the honest novelist’s courage as it must be against the temper of his craft; for should his characters have to “break out,” should the novelist be so far gallant as to concede something to the profligate melodrama of life, his people may only “break out” along lines which the art of their creator has laid out and made inevitable for them; whereas you and I know that living men will do queer things which are desperately alien from what we had thought their possibilities--nay, impossibilities--to be, living men will defy the whole art of characterisation in the twinkling of an eye and destroy every canon of art in a throb of a desire: so that we may make no count or chart of the queer, dark sides of our fellows, nor put any limit, of art, psychology, romance or decency, to the impossibilities which are, within the trembling of a leaf, possible to men and women. It is not often that I see Venice nowadays, for she lives for the most part with her father in the country, but now and again she will ask me to luncheon in her house in Upper Brook Street, or maybe I will call there on a sudden and find her sitting alone with an unopened book. We do not ever talk of that night, nor of the two chief players of that night, but the other day it came about that I found her sitting absorbed in the shadows of a dying fire, and I somehow said: “Waiting, Venice, waiting!” She was crouched like a child in the gloom of a Dorothy chair, and as I sat in another nearby a friendly flame darted through the twilight and made toys of her eyes. They were looking at me with every appearance of deep reflection, but now it was a woman who was looking out at me from Venice’s eyes, and the woman seemed to smile, and she said: “He is in India, with Bruce’s expedition. He will be coming home soon.” And then for the first time we spoke of that tempestuous night in July, the night but one after the children’s party. But of course I did not tell Venice all, particularly about the last part, according to the promise sworn between Sir Maurice Harpenden, Hilary and me.