after this fashion: "The Man lifted his head. He looked
about him at the gaily bedizzled crowd that besplotched
the midnight cabaret with riotous patches of colour. He
crushed his cigar against the brass of an Egyptian tray.
'Bah!' he murmured, 'Is it worth it?' Then he let his
head sink again."

You notice it? He lifted his head all the way up and let
it sink all the way down, and you still don't know who
he is. For The Woman the beginning is done like this:
"The Woman clenched her white hands till the diamonds
that glittered upon her fingers were buried in the soft
flesh. 'The shame of it,' she murmured. Then she took
from the table the telegram that lay crumpled upon it
and tore it into a hundred pieces. 'He dare not!' she
muttered through her closed teeth. She looked about the
hotel room with its garish furniture. 'He has no right
to follow me here,' she gasped."

All of which the reader has to take in without knowing
who the woman is, or which hotel she is staying at, or
who dare not follow her or why. But the modern reader
loves to get this sort of shadowy incomplete effect. If
he were told straight out that the woman's name was Mrs.
Edward Dangerfield of Brick City, Montana, and that she
had left her husband three days ago and that the telegram
told her that he had discovered her address and was
following her, the reader would refuse to go on.

This method of introducing the characters is bad enough.