Fat Joe, unlike the man outside, did not notice that a new note, dangerously hard and wickedly edged with ridicule, had replaced the amusement in Garry's voice. He grew a little more enthusiastic. "Well, that's as far as I've got, right up to now," he admitted with an explosive sigh. "But it looks like a good enough beginning, at that. All I got to do now is run 'em through three or four hundred pages, with him a-talkin' to her and her a-talkin' at him. All I got to do, accordin' to all the books I've ever read, is see that it don't all come too easy for him, and still turns out all right. I expect I'll run 'em into a clinch with another guy standin' around eatin' his heart out with jealousy. It'll serve him right; he's just that mean sort, you know. Oh, I'll just marry 'em, along toward the end of the last chapter, and that'll kind of close it up." Stephen O'Mara had been watching Joe's face while the latter talked, and therefore he was no more prepared than was Joe himself for the burst of harsh laughter that came from Garry's lips. It seemed utterly illogical that all actual humor should so swiftly fade from that situation with the first really audible expression of mirth. Steve himself believed it was only simulated, until his eyes swung to Garry's face. But he knew then what thoughts had been with Garret Devereau, all evening, before he had come up unheard to the door. "Why, you poor simple scholar of nature!" The wan-faced one's lips curled. "You're years behind your day! If you submitted such a screed to a publisher now, he'd think you'd written a history of archaic American types." He stopped to sneer. "Listen," he went on. "Listen, and I'll give you a plot, gratis, which, if you handle it right, will make you, overnight! Take your girl--a nice girl, to be sure, sweet and unsophisticated and--and childishly innocent, Joe, and--and well, you'll have to describe her, first, won't you? Let's dress her up, then--dress her up in an evening confection that leaves little to the imagination in front and--and ground for amazement in back. That's a fair starter. If you care to be analytical you can insist that the reason she dresses like that is--oh, just because she's so innocent that she doesn't know any better, eh! "All right! That establishes her very well. And then we can do just what you planned to do with your dear lady. We'll run her through three or four hundred pages, but with just a trifling change or two. Every chapter or so I'd leave her, Joe, in a situation that ends with a gasp--no pause even for a caramel! Three or four hundred pages, and then, if you have to marry her off why, let's be honest about it--no? Marry her off to the sort of a chap whom you'd man-handle to a pulp, Joe, if he came near--say a sister of yours. A nice, white-skinned, red-lipped, sweet, innocent sort of a little girl, Joe--and--and that finish will keep her true to type!"