think the reader's will also, if he consider it ripely. For now he

sees why I speak of the little people as of substantive inventors

and performers. To the end they had kept their secret. I will go

bail for the dreamer (having excellent grounds for valuing his

candour) that he had no guess whatever at the motive of the woman -

the hinge of the whole well-invented plot - until the instant of

that highly dramatic declaration. It was not his tale; it was the

little people's! And observe: not only was the secret kept, the

story was told with really guileful craftsmanship. The conduct of

both actors is (in the cant phrase) psychologically correct, and

the emotion aptly graduated up to the surprising climax. I am

awake now, and I know this trade; and yet I cannot better it. I am

awake, and I live by this business; and yet I could not outdo -

could not perhaps equal - that crafty artifice (as of some old,

experienced carpenter of plays, some Dennery or Sardou) by which

the same situation is twice presented and the two actors twice

brought face to face over the evidence, only once it is in her

hand, once in his - and these in their due order, the least

dramatic first. The more I think of it, the more I am moved to

press upon the world my question: Who are the Little People? They

are near connections of the dreamer's, beyond doubt; they share in

his financial worries and have an eye to the bank-book; they share

plainly in his training; they have plainly learned like him to

build the scheme of a considerate story and to arrange emotion in

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