"Yes," Minver said, facing about towards me. "How do you excuse yourself
for your ignorance in matters where you're always professionally making
such a bluff of knowledge? After all the marriages you have brought
about in literature, can you say positively and specifically how they
are brought about in life?"
"No, I can't," I admitted. "I might say that a writer of fiction is a
good deal like a minister who continually marries people without knowing
why."
"No, you couldn't, my dear fellow," the painter retorted. "It's part of
your swindle to assume that you _do_ know why. You ought to find out."
Wanhope interposed concretely, or as concretely as he could: "The
important thing would always be to find which of the lovers the
confession, tacit or explicit, began with."
"Acton ought to go round and collect human documents bearing on the
question. He ought to have got together thousands of specimens from
nature. He ought to have gone to all the married couples he knew, and
asked them just how their passion was confessed; he ought to have sent
out printed circulars, with tabulated questions.
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