r.

"Tell me, by all means," he responded, faintly.

Mr. Gouger's face bore its gentlest expression at that moment. He was
taking valuable time, time that belonged to his employers, to say
something that must temporarily disappoint, though in the end it might
benefit his hearer.

"Let me repeat," he said, "that your work is well written, and that I
have read it with the greatest interest. Its fault--an insuperable
one--is that it lacks fidelity to nature. Mr. Roseleaf, I think I could
gauge your past life with tolerable accuracy merely from what that
manuscript reveals."

The novelist shook his head. There was not a line of autobiography in
those pages, and he told his critic so.

"Oh, I understand," replied Mr. Gouger. "But this I have learned: Your
life has been marvelously colorless. Yet, in spite of that, you have
undertaken to write of things of which you know nothing, and about
which, I may add, you have made very poor guesses."

Mr. Weil, leaning back in his chair, began to show a decided interest.
Mr. Roseleaf, sitting upright, in an attitude of strained attention,
inquired what Mr. Gouger meant.

"Well, for instance, this," responded the critic: "You attempt to depict
the sensations of love, though you have never had a passion. Can you
expect to know how it feels to hold a beautiful girl in your arms, when
you never had one there? You put words of temptation into the mouth of
your villain which no real scamp would think of using, for their only
effect would be to alarm your heroine. You talk of a planned seduction
as if it were part of an oratorio. And you make your hero so
superlatively pure and sweet that no woman formed of flesh and blood
could endure him for an hour."

The color mounted to Roseleaf's face. He felt that this criticism was
not without foundation. But presently he rallied, and asked if it were
necessary for a man to experience every sensation before he dared write
about them.

"Do you suppose," he asked, desperately, "that Jules Verne ever traveled
sixty thousand leagues under the sea or made a journey to the moon?"

Mr. Weil could not help uttering a little laugh. Mr. Gouger struck his
hands together and clinched them.

"No," said he. "But he could have written neither of those wonderful
tales without a knowledge of the sciences of which they treat."

"He has read, and I have read," responded Roseleaf. "What is the
difference?"

"He has studied, and you have not," retorted th