.

Is that the evening paper?
Where is St.Paul ?" Austin passed it across the table and sat for a moment, alternately yawning and skimming the last chapter of his novel.
"Stuff and rubbish, mush and piffle!" he muttered, closing the book and pushing it from him across the table; "love, as usual, grossly out of proportion to the ensemble.

That theory of the earth's rotation, you know; all these absurd books are built on it.

Why do men read 'em?
They grin when they do it! Love is only the sixth sense--just one-sixth of a man's existence.

The other five-sixths of his time he's using his other senses working for a living." Selwyn looked up over his newspaper, then lowered and folded it.
"In these novels," continued Gerard, irritably, "five-sixths of the pages are devoted to love; everything else is subordinated to it; it controls all motives, it initiates all action, it drugs reason, it prolongs the tuppenny suspense, sustains cheap situations, and produces agonisingly profitable climaxes for the authors.