He looked at her quietly, and answered without the least hesitation or shyness.
'I've no business to be in love with you, because I'm a fraud,' he said.
'A fraud! You? What in the world do you mean?'
Margaret was thoroughly surprised. This gifted, shy, youthful man who had fought his way to the front by his own talent and hard work, was of all people she knew the one with whom she least connected any idea of deception. He only nodded and looked at her.
'A fraud!' she exclaimed again. 'I suppose it's some sort of false modesty that makes you say that! You know that you are a very successful writer and that you have earned your success. Why do you try to make out——'
'I'm not trying to make out anything. I tell you the plain truth. I'm a fraud.'
'Nonsense!' Margaret was almost angry at his persistence.
'I would not tell you, if I did not care for you so much,' he answered. 'But as I do, and as you seem to like me a little, I should be an awful cad if I kept you in the dark any longer. You won't publish it on the housetops. I'm not Edmund Lushington at all.'
'You are not Edmund Lushington, the critic?' Margaret's mouth opened in surprise.
'I'm the critic all right,' he answered, with a faint smile. 'I'm the man that writes, the man you've heard of. But I'm not Lushington. It's an assumed name.'