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"Because the only thing possible for a man to say about them is what his imagination dictates. He'll never learn any more concerning women than that."

"Imagination is not literature," said Brown junior, with polite toleration.

"Imagination is often the truer truth," said the old gentleman.

"Father, that is rot."

"Yes, my son – and it is almost Good Literature, too. Go ahead, shake us if you like. But, if you do, you'll come back married."

XIII

So Brown, who was nourishing a theory, shook his family and, requiring mental solitude to develop his idea, he went to Verbena Inlet. Not to the enormous and expensive caravansary swarming with wealth, ennui, envy, and fashion; not even to its sister hotel similarly infested. But to West Verbena, where for a mile along the white shell road modest hotels, boarding houses, and cottages nestled behind mosquito screens under the dingy cabbage-palmettos.

Here was stranded the winter driftwood from the North – that peculiar flotsam and jetsam which summered in similar resorts in the North, rocked in rocking chairs on dreary rural verandas, congregated at the village post-office, awaited its men folk every week-end from the filthy and sweltering metropolis.

It was at a shabby but pretentious hostelry called the Villa Hibiscus that Brown took up his quarters. Several rusty cabbage-palmettos waved above the whitish, sandy soil surrounding it; one or two discouraged orange trees fruited despondently near the veranda. And the place swarmed with human beings from all over the United States, lured from inclement climes, into the land of the orange and the palm – wistfully seeking in the land of advertised perpetual sunshine what the restless world has never yet discovered anywhere – surcease from care, from longing, from the unkindliness of its fellow seekers.

Dowdiness filled the veranda rocking chairs; unlovely hands were folded; faded eyes gazed vacantly at the white road, at the oranges; enviously at the flashing wheels and fluttering lingerie from the great Hotel Verbena.

Womanhood was there in all its ages and average phases; infancy, youth, middle age, age – all were there in the rusty villas and hotels ranged for a mile along the smooth shell road.

The region, thought Brown to himself, was rich in material. And the reflection helped him somewhat with his dinner, which needed a fillip or two.

In his faultless dinner jacket he sauntered out after the evening meal; and the idea which possessed and even thrilled him aided him to forget what he had eaten.

The lagoon glimmered mysteriously in the starlight; the royal palms bordering it rustled high in the night breeze from the sea. Perfume from oleander hedges smote softly the olfactories of Brown; the southern whip-poor-wills' hurried whisper thrilled the darkness with a deeper mystery.

Here was the place to study woman. There could be no doubt about that. Here, untrammelled, uninterrupted, unvexed by the jarring of the world, he could place his model, turn her loose, and observe her.

To concentrate all his powers of analytical observation upon a single specimen of woman was his plan. Painters and sculptors used models. He meant to use one, too.

It would be simple. First, he must discover what he wanted. This accomplished, he had decided to make a plain business proposition to her. She was to go about her own affairs and her pleasure without embarrassment or self-consciousness – behave naturally; do whatever it pleased her to do. But he was to be permitted to observe her, follow her, make what notes he chose; and, as a resumé of each day, they were to meet in some quiet spot in order that he might question her as he chose, concerning whatever interested him, or whatever in her movements or behaviour had seemed to him involved or inexplicable.

Thus and thus only, he had decided, could light be shed upon the mysterious twilight veiling the inner woman! Thus only might carefully concealed motives be detected, cause and effect co-ordinated, the very source of all feminine logic, reason, and emotion be laid bare and dissected at leisure.

Never had anybody written such a novel as he would be equipped to write. The ultimate word concerning woman was about to be written.

Inwardly excited, outwardly calm, he had seated himself on the coquina wall which ran along the lagoon under the Royal Palms. He was about to study his subject as the great masters studied, coolly, impersonally, with clear and merciless intelligence, setting down with calm simplicity nothing except facts.

All that was worthy and unworthy should be recorded – the good with the evil – nothing should be too ephemeral, too minute, to escape his searching analysis.

And all the while, though Brown was not aware of it, the memory of a face he had seen in the dining-room grew vaguely and faded, waxing and waning alternately, like a phantom illustration accompanying his thoughts.

As for the model he should choose to study, she ought to be thoroughly feminine, he thought; young, probably blonde, well formed, not very deeply experienced, and with every human capacity for good and bad alike.

He would approach her frankly, tell her what he required, offer her the pay of an artist's model, three dollars a day; and, if she accepted, she could have her head and do what she liked. All that concerned him was to make his observations and record them.

In the blue starlight people passed and re-passed like ghosts along the shell-road – the white summer gowns of young girls were constantly appearing in the dusk, taking vague shape, vanishing. On the lagoon, a guitar sounded very far away. The suave scent of oleander grew sweeter.

Spectral groups passed in clinging lingerie; here and there a ghost lingered to lean over the coquina wall, her lost gaze faintly accented by some level star. One of these, a slender young thing, paused near to Brown, resting gracefully against the wall.

All around her the whip-poor-wills were calling breathlessly; the perfume of oleander grew sweeter.

As for the girl herself, she resembled the tenth muse. Brown had never attempted to visualise his mistress; it had been enough for him that she was Thalomene, daughter of Zeus, and divinely fair.

But now, as he recognised the face he had noticed that evening in the dining-room, somehow he thought of his muse for the first time, concretely. Perhaps because the girl by the coquina wall was young, slim, golden haired, and Greek.

His impulse, without bothering to reason, was to hop from the wall and go over to where she was standing.

She looked around calmly as he approached, gave him a little nod in recognition of his lifted hat.

"I'm John Brown, 4th," he said. "I'm stopping at the Villa Hibiscus. Do you mind my saying so?"

"No, I don't mind," she said.

"There is a vast amount of nonsense in formality and convention," said Brown. "If you don't mind ignoring such details, I have something important to say to you."

She looked at him unsmilingly. Probably it was the starlight in her eyes that made them glimmer as though with hidden laughter.

"I am," said Brown, pleasantly, "an author."

"Really," she said.

"When I say that I am an author," continued Brown seriously, "I mean in the higher sense."

"Oh. What is the higher sense, Mr. Brown?" she asked.

"The higher sense does not necessarily imply authorship. I do not mean that I am a mere writer. I have written very little."

"Oh," she said.

"Very little," repeated Brown combatively. "You will look in vain among the crowded counters piled high with contemporary fiction for anything from my pen."

"Then perhaps I had better not look," she said so simply that Brown was a trifle disappointed in her.

"Some day, however," he said, "you may search, and, perhaps, not wholly in vain."

"Oh, you are writing a book!"

"Yes," he said, "I am, so to speak, at work on a novel."

"Might one, with discretion, make further inquiry concerning your novel, Mr. Brown?"

"You may."

"Thank you," she said, apparently a trifle disconcerted by the privilege so promptly granted.

"You may," repeated Brown. "Shall I explain why?"