"Why, my dear fellow? Because you're stagnating—because it is life's second stage—because you've got beyond the first—because each of your books is exactly like the last——"
This ceased to be theory. Hubert was in arms at once.
"I don't see that," he said in a hard voice, almost sulkily. "As a matter of fact, several of the critics went out of their way to call The Bread of Idleness new, original, etcetera."
"Yes," replied Kenneth Boyd, who secretly enjoyed wounding just deeply enough his friend's self-esteem; "the plot was different, but its heroine the same. You had her in Wandering Stars; you had her in Life; you've had her in them all. There is a Hubert Brett type no less than a Gibson Girl."
"I still don't see, even so," Hubert icily replied, "exactly why I have to marry."
Kenneth Boyd smiled unseen. "Because to widen your art, you must widen your idea of woman. If you really know one woman, they say, then you can know them all."
A good deal of the author's self-esteem returned. He looked relieved. So that was all, was it?
"If you know them all, as I do, by study," he answered, "you don't want to know one."
And now indeed Kenneth Boyd peered at him seriously, as at a patient very critical.
"That sort of remark," he said, "just shows that you know nothing about women and ought to marry one."