maid, with some ingenious falsehood, the
disorder of her things. Flesh and blood could bear the strain no longer;
and I think it was the next morning (though chronology is always hazy in
the theatre of the mind) that he burst from his reserve. They had been
breakfasting together in one corner of a great, parqueted,
sparely-furnished room of many windows; all the time of the meal she had
tortured him with sly allusions; and no sooner were the servants gone,
and these two protagonists alone together, than he leaped to his feet.
She too sprang up, with a pale face; with a pale face, she heard him as
he raved out his complaint: Why did she torture him so? she knew all,
she knew he was no enemy to her; why did she not denounce him at once?
what signified her whole behaviour? why did she torture him? and yet
again, why did she torture him? And when he had done, she fell upon her
knees, and with outstretched hands: "Do you not understand?" she cried.
"I love you!"

Hereupon, with a pang of wonder and mercantile delight the dreamer
awoke. His mercantile delight was not of long endurance; for it soon
became plain that in this spirited tale there were unmarketable
elements; which is just the reason why you have it here so briefly told.
But his wonder has still kept growing; and I think the reader's will
also, if he consider it ripely. For now he sees why I speak of the
little people as of substantive inventors and performers. To the end
they had kept their secret. I will go bail for the dreamer (having
excellent grounds for valuing his candour) that he had no guess whatever
at the motive of the woman--the hinge of the whole well-invented
plot--until the instant of that highly dramatic declaration. It was not
his tale; it was the little people's! And observe: not only was the
secret kept, the story was told with really guileful craftsmanship. The
conduct of both actors is (in the cant phrase) psychologically correct,
and the emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising climax. I am awake
now, and I know this trade; and yet I cannot better it. I am awake, and
I live by this business; and yet I could not outdo--could not perhaps
equal--that crafty artifice (as of some old, experienced carpenter of
plays, some Dennery or Sardou) by which the same situation is twice
presented and the two actors twice brought face to face over the
evidence, only once it is in her hand, once in his--and these in their
due order, the least dramatic firs