"Oh, it very soon gets to be an old story," was his answer. "One studio is very like another."
"But their work? That must be awfully interesting."
"Yes, to a novice, but that soon gets to be an old story too. An artist is only a man who puts paint or charcoal on cardboard or canvas with more or less cleverness, just as an author is a man who has more or less skill in getting ink on to paper."
Miss Merrivale laughed, with more glee than comprehension.
"You are always so witty," she said. "I don't wonder your books sell. I think that girl who couldn't tell which man she liked best was just too funny for anything. I can't for the life of me see how you think of such things, anyway."
"The trouble isn't to think what to say, but to tell what not to say."
"I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Now of course an artist just sees things, and all he has to do is to make pictures of them; but you have to make up things."
"But we see things too," the novelist responded, smiling upon her, and reflecting that she was looking uncommonly pretty that morning.
"Oh, but that's different. Now you never knew a girl who was hesitating which of two lovers to choose, and she wouldn't tell you how she felt if you did; but there it is all in your book so natural that every girl says to herself that's just the way she should feel."
The flattery was too evidently sincere not to be pleasing. So long as praise is genuine, few men are so exacting as to insist that it be also intelligent.