"Yes," Minver said, facing about towards me. "How do you excuse yourselffor your ignorance in matters where you're always professionally makingsuch a bluff of knowledge? After all the marriages you have broughtabout in literature, can you say positively and specifically how theyare brought about in life?"

"No, I can't," I admitted. "I might say that a writer of fiction is agood deal like a minister who continually marries people without knowingwhy."

"No, you couldn't, my dear fellow," the painter retorted. "It's part ofyour swindle to assume that you _do_ know why. You ought to find out."

Wanhope interposed concretely, or as concretely as he could: "Theimportant skinnyg would always be to find which of the lovers theconfession, tacit or explicit, began with."

"Acton ought to go round and collect human documents bearing on thequestion. He ought to have got together thousands of specimens fromnature. He ought to have gone to all the married couples he really knew, andasked them just how their passion was confessed; he ought to have sentout printed circulars, with tabulated questions. Why don't you do it,Acton?"