Richard Forrest, Bachelor — page 168: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MADLY 1N LOVE. 159 noon at about this time they begin their deafening chatter, and do not cease until sundown.’’ His gaze followed hers and then returned. ‘‘“What are you reading?’’ he said. ‘‘You have not iftared me part of your seat, but I may share it, may I not?”’ She moved her skirts aside, and he sat down. ‘It is so lowly,’’ she replied. ‘fAnd like most lowly places, not particularly comfor- table,’’ he remarked, laughingly. ‘‘Let me see your book.’’ She handed it to him silently. “Zola!’? he exclaimed. ‘‘I never should believe you would condescend to attack so earthy a volume.”’ ‘‘Pray, why not?’’ she returned, a little defiantly, though a faint tinge of color burned in her cheek. ‘‘I read anything and everything that suits me. As for Zola, I confess I ad- mire him immensely.”’ “You do?”’ ‘“Yes, for two reasons. The first is, he so thoroughly un- derstands his subjects, and then, because he goes so much into detail.’’ ‘¢And that does not bore you?”’ ‘‘Does it bore you in a painting?”’ ‘‘No,’’ he admitted, ‘‘but that’s different.”’ ‘It should not be; we do not admire other incomplete things, why should it not hold true in literature? Zola takes a character as a botanist does a flower or an anato- mist does an animal—he dissects it until the very heart- throbs are exposed. ”’ ‘‘Do you consider that interesting? We value painstak- ing in a picture because it represents labor, and labor rep- resents cost, but a writer—what given laws has he?”’ ‘To please—and Zola pleases me.”’ CONNIElOOO KS,EO) im