“But, Mr. Popples,” interrupted Constance, recovering from her amusement so far as to be able to interrupt the current of the bookseller’s engaging offers, “I never wrote anything in my life. I asked out of sheer curiosity.”
Mr. Popples smiled blandly, without the least appearance of disappointment.
“Well, well, Miss Fearing, you are quite right,” he said. “In point of fact those little literary ventures of young ladies very rarely do come to much, do they? To misquote the Laureate, Miss Fearing, we might say that ‘Men must write and women must read’! Eh, Miss Fearing?”
The old fellow chuckled at his bad joke, as he wrapped up the volume of Critical Essays by William Johnson, and handed it across the table. There were only tables in Mr. Popples’s establishment; he despised counters.
“Anything else to serve you, Miss Fearing? A novel or two, for the May weather? No? Let me take it to your carriage.”
“Thanks. I am walking, but I will carry it. Good evening.”
“Good evening, Miss Fearing. Your parasol is here. Walking this evening! In the May weather! Good evening, Miss Fearing.”
And Mr. Popples bowed his favourite customer out of his establishment, with a very kindly look in his tired old spectacled eyes.
Constance had got what she had come for. If William Johnson, author of Critical Essays, a journalist and a man presumably acquainted with all the ins and outs of publishing, had made nothing by his successful book, George would be doing very well in obtaining ten per cent on the advertised retail price of every copy of his novel which was sold. Constance had been mistaken when she had doubted Johnson, but she did not regret her doubt in the least. After all, she had undertaken the responsibility of George’s book, and she could not conscientiously believe everything she was told by strangers concerning its chances. Mr. Popples, however, was above suspicion, and had, moreover, no reason for telling that the Critical Essays had brought their author no remuneration. Johnson’s face, too, inspired confidence, as well as George’s own trust in him. Constance felt that she had done all she could, and she accordingly made her preparations for going out of town.
She was glad to get away, in order to study herself. The habit of introspection had grown upon her, for she had encouraged herself in it, ever since she had begun to feel that George was something more to her than a friend. Her over-conscientious nature feared to make some mistake which might embitter his life as well as her own. She was in constant dread of letting herself be carried away by the impulse of a moment to say something that might bind her to marry him, before she could feel that she loved him wholly as she wished to love him. On looking back, she bitterly regretted having allowed him to kiss her cheek on that morning in the Park. She had been under the influence of a strong emotion, produced by the conclusion of his book, and she seemed in her own eyes to have acted in a way quite unworthy of herself. Had she been able to carry her analysis further, she would have discovered that behind her distrust of herself she felt a lingering distrust of George. A year earlier she had thought it possible that he was strongly attracted by her fortune. Now, however, she would have scouted the idea, if it had presented itself in that shape. But it was present, nevertheless, in a more subtle form.