And then, having heaps of spare time at the No-Use-Coming-Here Office,
Algy began to write novels and found himself at once. You've read some
of them, of course? Life with a big L, my dear. Every kind of world
while you wait, the upper, the under, and the half. Lallie was
very glad of the money that came rolling in, but I believe she said
wistfully, "How does my gentle quiet Algy know so much about
this, that and the other?" And her gentle quiet Algy made answer:
"Intuition, dear; imagination; the novelist's temperament."
By-and-by, however, she began to hear of his being seen at the Umpty
Club and Gaston's, chatting with Pearl Preston (one of those people,
you know, Daphne, who're immensely talked about but never mentioned).
And then a "certain liveliness" set in at the official residence of
the Permanent Irremovable Assistant Under-Secretary.
"You silly little goosey!" said Algy; "don't you see that it's not as
a man who admires her but as a novelist who's studying her that I
talk to Pearl Preston? She's my next heroine. A heroine like that is a
_sine qua non_ in a novel of the Modernist school."
But Lallie _couldn't_ see the dif between a man and a novelist, and
Algy _couldn't_ write his best seller without studying its heroine,
and so--and so--at last our poor prize couple are in that long list
that an overworked judge complained of the other day.
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