enough I began instinctively to turn the scene into literature; admitting
without hesitation, as I am often forced to admit, that the detail of
reality is so much better and more typical than any I can invent.

But, having said that, I wonder how far one does invent in such an
experience? The same night I hinted something of my appreciation of the
dramatic quality of the stir at the Hall door to Frank Jervaise, Brenda's
brother, and he, quite obviously, had altogether missed that aspect of the
affair. He scowled with that forensic, bullying air he is so successfully
practising at the Junior Bar, as he said, "I suppose you realise just what
this may _mean_, to all of us?"

Jervaise evidently had failed to appreciate the detail that I had relished
with such delight. He had certainly not savoured the quality of it. And in
one sense I may claim to have invented the business of the scene. I may
have added to it by my imaginative participation. In any case my
understanding as interpreter was the prime essential--a fact that shows
how absurd it is to speak of "photographic detail" in literature, or
indeed to attempt a proper differentiation between realism and romance.

We were all of us in the Hall, an inattentive, chattering audience of
between twenty and thirty people. The last dance had been stopped at ten
minutes to twelve, in order that the local parson and his wife--their name
was Sturton--might be out of the house of entertainment before the first
stroke of Sunday morning. Every one was wound up to a pitch of satisfied
excitement. The Cinderella had been a success. The floor and the music and
the supper had been good, Mrs. Jervaise had thrown off her air of
pre-occupation with some distasteful suspicion, and we had all been
entertained and happy. And yet these causes for satisfaction had been
nothing more than a setting for Brenda Jervaise. It was she who had