Again had this supernaturally elusive
heroine upset the plans of one who had essayed to embalm her virtues
in a literary mould. I could not bring her into contact with either
of my heroes.
I threw my pen down in disgust, slammed to the cover of my ink-well,
and for two hours paced madly through the maze-like walks of the
Central Park, angry and depressed; and from that moment until I
undertook the narration of this pathetic story I gave Harley's
heroine up as unavailable material for my purposes. She was worse,
if anything, in imaginative work than in realism, because she
absolutely defied the imagination, while the realist she would be
glad to help so long as his realism was kept in strict accord with
her ideas of what the real really was.
It was some days before I saw Harley again, and I thought he looked
tired and anxious--so anxious, indeed, that I was afraid he might
possibly be in financial straits, for I knew that for three weeks he
had not turned out any of his usual pot-boilers, having been too busy
trying to write the story for Messrs.
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