"Roger tells me that we are to have the new book on Wednesday," said Mr. Wilberforce, as he stood looking down upon her with the peculiar insight which belongs to the affection of age. Then it seemed to her suddenly that he understood the cause of her disturbance and that there were both pity and disappointment in his eyes.
"I hope so," she answered, smiling the first insincere smile of her life, for even as she uttered the words she knew that she no longer felt the old eager, consuming interest in her work, and that the making of books appeared to her an employment which was tedious and without end. Why, she wondered vaguely, had she devoted her whole life to a pursuit in which there was so little of the pulsation of the intenser realities? She felt at the instant as if a bandage had dropped from before her eyes, and the fact that Kemper as an individual did not enter into her thoughts in no wise lessened his tremendous moral effect upon her awakening nature. Not one man, but life itself was making its appeal to her, and for the first time she realised something of the intoxication that might dwell in pleasure—in pleasure accepted solely as a pursuit, as an end in and for itself alone. Then, a moment later, standing by her desk in her room upstairs, she remembered, in an illuminating flash, the look with which Kemper had parted from her at her door.
CHAPTER III
THE MOTH AND THE FLAME
Several weeks after this, on the day that Trent's first play was accepted, he dropped in to Adams' office, where the editor was busily giving directions about the coming Review.
"I know you aren't in a mood for interruptions," began the younger man, in a voice which, in spite of his effort at control, still quivered with a boyish excitement, "but I couldn't resist coming to tell you that Benson has at last held out his hand. I'm to be put on in the autumn."
Adams laid down the manuscript upon which he was engaged, and turned with the winning smile which Trent had grown to look for and to love.
"Well, that is jolly news," he said heartily, "you know without my saying so that there is no one in New York who is more interested in your success than I am. We'll make a fine first night of it."
"That's why I dropped in to tell you," responded Trent, while his youthful enthusiasm made Adams feel suddenly as old as failure. "I came about a week ago, by the way, but that shock-headed chap at the door told me you were out of town."