toire.) Sometimes in the night Amy, waking
up, wonders whether she did lock her diary,
and steals downstairs in white to make sure.
On these occasions she undoubtedly lingers
among the pages, re-reading the peculiarly de-
lightful bit she wrote yesterday; so we could
peep over her shoulder, while the reader peeps
over ours. Then why don't we do it? Is it
because this would be a form of eavesdropping,
and that we cannot be sure our hands are clean
enough to turn the pages of a young girl's
thoughts? It cannot be that, because the nove-
lists do it. It is because in a play we must tell
nothing that is not revealed by the spoken words;
you must find out all you want to know from
them; there is no weather even in plays nowa-
days except in melodrama; the novelist can
have sixteen chapters about the hero's grand-
parents, but we cannot even say he had any unless
he says it himself. There can be no rummaging
in the past for us to show what sort of people
our characters are; we are allowed only to
present them as they toe the mark; then the
handkerchief falls, and off they go.

-2-