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In other words, life assimilates all its great facts and problems and the novelist who would set them forth effectively must first have assimilated them too, so that they will not have to be “brought in” the story he is telling, but will be in it from the beginning, disclosing themselves as the action develops. The reader must feel that he has discovered the fact or the problem for himself, that he, all by himself, has abstracted it out of the scenes put before him. He must see Cora Doe go by and hear of John Doe’s last appearance and look upon the wreck of their lives—but all the rest must be left to him to grasp unaided! The real reason why no story can have a moral is that every reader must find his own moral, even if each finds the same one!

Mrs. Norris understands this and practices it. She does not ask you to consider whether a girl, bred in sordid surroundings and having access in youth only to tawdry ideals, can lift herself to gentleness and dignity and become, at any cost, the captain of her soul. No! She makes you acquainted with Julia Page. She refrains from questioning the efficacy of divorce and writes The Heart of Rachael, which makes every reader ask himself the question. If her readers unite in an identical answer and that answer is the one Mrs. Norris herself would return, does that convict her of stepping outside the novelist’s province? Bless you, no; the novelist’s province is as large as life is, and its boundaries in the case of any given writer as far as he can carry and maintain them. Mrs. Norris’ s frontiers are wide.