character, so that our friends and relatives appear
to us like the men and women in novels. Mabel was like that. She
walked in and out of half a dozen books which the author had recently
read. And her importance in this preface lies in the illumination she
shed upon this same subject of literature. The author at that time, as
will be seen in the following pages, was addicted to fine writing and
he held the view that literature was for the cultured and made no
direct appeal to the masses. Mabel unconsciously showed that this was
a mistaken view. Mabel was as chock full of literature as a Russian
novel. She had adventures everywhere. The author coming in and talking
to her, after breakfasting in the same coffee-room, was an adventure.
It would make a story, she observed with naive candour. Only the other
night, she remarked, a strange gentleman came, a foreigner of some
sort, and asked for chocolates. A very entertaining gentleman with a
bag, which he asked her to keep. No fear, she observed; no bombs or
things in _her_ shop--take it to the cloak-room in the station. Well,
he must have done so, for they got it out of there after his arrest.
Here was his photograph in the Sunday paper. Millions of francs he'd
stole. Like a novel, wasn't it? The author said it was, very, and
begged for more. He said she ought to write them down. Mabel looked
grave at this and said she had a fellow ... splendid education he had
had. Was in the Prudential. Her voice grew low and hesitating. He was
going to give it up! Give up the Prudential? But that was a job for
life, wasn't it? Ah, but he had it in him.... It appeared that he had
won five pounds for a story. It was wonderful the way he wrote them
off. In his spare time. And poetry. He was really a poet, but poetry
didn't pay, the author was given to understand. So he wrote stories.
Some people made thousands a year.

This was all very well from Mabel's point of view, but the author did
not want to go into the vexed question of royalties. He wanted, on the
contrary, to know Mabel's feelings towards the coming Maupassant of
North London. Did she love him? Or rather, to put the matter in
another way, did he love her? Was he permitted that supreme privilege?
Well, they had been going round together, on and off, this nine
months now. As for being _engaged_ ... he only got two pound a week as
yet, remember. Yes, that was why she wanted him to go in for this
writing and make a hit. She'd take it