artistic technique unless the subject he is treating is of small consequence?

— That is an extreme opinion — quite as extreme as the opposite opinion of Arnold Bennett, who says: the artist must attend first to the manner of presenting the subject, more than to the subject itself; he must be in love with artistic technique and literary form.

— And what is your own view?

— I hold that form and meaning complete one another, and the artist practiced in writing is the one who expresses himself artistically in a spontaneous way. When did the skillful football player, for instance, ever calculate how to move his feet to strike the ball? His long practice has taught him to play spontaneously. So it is with the writer: thanks to training, he cuts the form

to the measure of the meaning quite naturally.

— And what is your view of the novelist's task?

— I will give you a simple com-parison. A thick wall screens the reader from the world of the nov-elist's imagining, and on this wall stands the novelist, who sees, and shows in his turn. This does not mean that he gives a photographic picture of what he beholds; rather it is his duty to add and to take away in just the measure that the requirements of art demand.

— And do words help the writer to express all that he wishes, as much as pigments help the painter, or melodies the musician?

— Words have their limits, yes. In the field of description, for example, the writer cannot attain the reach of the painter or the sculptor. And in the field of inward suggestion he falls short

of the musician. But words have their effectiveness over a wide range, since they gather their means from the most varied fields. In a single novel, for instance, you may find painting, and music, and sculpture, and dance, and imagination, and analysis, and guidance, and philosophy. If words fall short of the other means in this field or that, they are unrivaled in comprehensive-ness. And that is a precious weapon in the novelist's hands.

The world-famous woman of let-ters was on the point of traveling from London to her own region, Yorkshire; she charged me with a sincere greeting to the women writers of the Arabs (and her portrait by way of remembrance), while I carried to her a brief notion of woman's literary output among us; and she longed to know the East and to draw inspiration from its air.