and tell a tale like a
practised writer."

"Of course not. The practised writer has a style of his own, a
conventional narrative style which may be very far from nature. People
in books very seldom talk as they do in real life. When people in books
begin to talk like human beings the reader thinks the dialogue either
commonplace or mildly realistic, and votes it a bore."

"Then why try to write as one talks? Why not cultivate the conventional
style of the practised writer?"

"Why talk commonplaces?" cried Paul a little tartly. "Of course most
people must do so if they talk at all, and they are usually the people
who talk all the time. But I have known people whose ordinary
conversation was extraordinary, and worth putting down in a book--every
word of it."

"In my experience," said Miss. Juno, "people who talk like books are a
burden."

"They needn't talk like the conventional book, I tell you. Let them have
something to say and say it cleverly--that is the kind of conversation
to make books of."

"What if all that we've been saying here, under the rose, as it were,
were printed just as we've said it?"

"What if it were? It would at least be natural, and we've been saying
something of interest to each other; why should it not interest a third
party?"

Miss. Juno smiled and rejoined, "I am not a confirmed eavesdropper, but
I often find myself so situated that I cannot avoid overhearing what
other people are saying to one another; it is seldom that, under such
circumstances, I hear anything that interests me."

"Yes, but if you knew the true story of those very people, all that they
may be saying in your hearing would no doubt possess an interest,
inasmuch as it would serve to develop their history."

"Our conversation is growing a little thin, Paul, don't you think so? We
couldn't put all this into a book."

"If it helped to give a clue to our character and our motives, we could.
The thing is to be interesting: if we are interesting, in ourselves, by
reason of our original charm or our unconventionality, almost anything
we might say or do ought to interest others. Conventional people are
never interesting."

"Yet the majority of mankind is conventional to a degree; the
conventionals help to fill up; their habitual love of conventionality,
or their fear of the unconventional, is what keeps them in their place.
This is very fortunate. On the other hand, a world full of people too
clever to be kept in thei