He shook his head.
"It is a very bad attack," he said. "Your generalities may be all right, but they are not convincing."
"I have not spoken a word to a woman, except to Mrs. Burdett, for a week or more," I declared.
Mabane resumed his work. Such a discussion, his gesture seemed to indicate, was not worth continuing. But I continued, following out my train of thought, though I spoke as much to myself as to my friend.
"You are right about my stories," I admitted. "I have painted rose-coloured pictures of an imaginary life, and publishers have bought them, and the public, I suppose, have read them. I have dressed up puppets of wood and stone, and set them moving like mechanical dolls—over-gilded, artificial, vulgar. And all the time the real thing knocks at our doors."
Mabane stepped back from his canvas to examine critically the effect of an unexpected dash of colour.
"The public, my dear Greatson," he said abstractedly, "do not want the real thing—from you. Every man to his mêtier. Yours is to sing of blue skies and west winds, of hay-scented meadows and Watteau-like revellers in a paradise as artificial as a Dutch garden. Take my advice, and keep your muse chained. The other worlds are for the other writers."
I was annoyed with Mabane. There was just sufficient truth in his words to make them sound brutal. I answered him with some heat.
"Not if I starve for it, Allan? The whole cycle of life goes humming around us, hour by hour. It is here, there, everywhere. I will bring a little of it into my work, or I will write no more."
Mabane shook his head. He was busy again upon his canvas.