{"product_id":"2940014061582","title":"Though One Rose From the Dead","description":"You are very welcome to the Alderling incident, my dear Acton, if you\u003cbr\u003ethink you can do anything with it, and I will give it as\u003cbr\u003ecircumstantially as possible. The thing has its limitations, I should\u003cbr\u003ethink, for the fictionists, chiefly in a sort of roundedness which\u003cbr\u003eleaves little play to the imagination. It seems to me that it would be\u003cbr\u003emore to your purpose if it were less pat in its catastrophe, but you\u003cbr\u003eare a better judge of all that than I am, and I will put the facts in\u003cbr\u003eyour hands, and keep my own hands off, so far as any plastic use of\u003cbr\u003ethe material is concerned.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first I knew of the peculiar Alderling situation was shortly after\u003cbr\u003eWilliam James's Will to Believe came out. I had been telling the\u003cbr\u003eAlderlings about it, for they had not seen it, and I noticed that from\u003cbr\u003etime to time they looked significantly at each other. When I had got\u003cbr\u003ethrough, he gave a little laugh, and she said, \"Oh, you may laugh!\"\u003cbr\u003eand then I made bold to ask, \"What is it?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Marion can tell you,\" he said. He motioned towards the coffee-pot and\u003cbr\u003easked, \"More?\" I shook my head, and he said, \"Come out, and let us see\u003cbr\u003ewhat the maritime interests have been doing for us. Pipe or cigar?\" I\u003cbr\u003echose cigarettes, and he brought the box off the table, stopping on\u003cbr\u003ehis way to the veranda, and taking his pipe and tobacco-pouch from the\u003cbr\u003ehall mantel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMrs. Alderling had got to the veranda before us, and done things to\u003cbr\u003ethe chairs and cushions, and was leaning against one of the slender,\u003cbr\u003efluted pine columns like some rich, blond caryatid just off duty, with\u003cbr\u003ethe blue of her dress and the red of her hair showing deliciously\u003cbr\u003eagainst the background of white house-wall. He and she were an\u003cbr\u003eastonishing and satisfying contrast; in the midst of your amazement\u003cbr\u003eyou felt the divine propriety of a woman like her wanting just such a\u003cbr\u003ewiry, smoky-complexioned, blackbrowed, black-bearded, bald-headed\u003cbr\u003elittle man as he was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore he sat down where she was going to put him he stood stoopingly,\u003cbr\u003eand frowned at the waters of the cove lifting from the foot of the\u003cbr\u003elawn that sloped to it before the house. \"Three lumbermen, two\u003cbr\u003egoodish-sized yachts, a dozen sloop-rigged boats: not so bad. About\u003cbr\u003ethe usual number that come loafing in to spend the night. You ought to\u003cbr\u003esee them when it threatens to breeze up. Then they're here in flocks.\u003cbr\u003eGo on, Marion.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe gave a soft groan of comfort as he settled in his chair and began\u003cbr\u003epulling at his short black pipe, and she let her eyes dwell on him in\u003cbr\u003ea rapture that curiously interested me. People in love are rarely\u003cbr\u003einteresting--that is, flesh-and-blood people. Of course I know that\u003cbr\u003elovers are the life of fiction, and that a story of any kind can\u003cbr\u003escarcely hold the reader without them. Yet lovers in real life are, so\u003cbr\u003efar as I have observed them, bores. They are confessed to be\u003cbr\u003edisgusting before or after marriage when they let their fondness\u003cbr\u003eappear, but even when they try to hide it they are tiresome. Character\u003cbr\u003egoes down before passion in them; nature is reduced to propensity.\u003cbr\u003eThen, how is it that the novelist manages to keep these, and to give\u003cbr\u003eus nature and character while seeming to offer nothing but propensity\u003cbr\u003eand passion? Perhaps he does not give them. Perhaps what he does is to\u003cbr\u003ehypnotize us so that we each of us identify ourselves with the lovers,\u003cbr\u003eand add our own natures and characters to the single principle that\u003cbr\u003eanimates them. But if we have them there before us in the tiresome\u003cbr\u003ereality they exclude us from their pleasure in each other and stop up\u003cbr\u003ethe perspective of our happiness with their hulking personalities,\u003cbr\u003ebare of all the iridescence of potentiality which we could have cast\u003cbr\u003eabout them. Something of this iridescence may cling to unmarried\u003cbr\u003elovers, in spite of themselves, but wedded bliss is a sheer offense.","brand":"WDS Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47069283418352,"sku":"2940014061582","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940014061582_p0.jpg?v=1763599973","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940014061582","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}