"He's told you!" he gasped.
"Certainly," I said, smiling to cover the pain in my heart, "did you think he could keep it from me? Besides, I half-guessed it all the time."
"I told Bill that," said my guest, triumphantly, and then, as Bill emerged from my room, gingerly carrying the hat, as if it were a species of lavender lydite, "Well Richard Warren, I suppose by now your wife is your severest critic!"
The hat fluttered from Bill's grasp. I shrieked. But he caught it again deftly.
"Here you are," he said, handing it to me, and went on, "My kindest critic, you mean, but—my critic always."
"What do you think of the new book?" asked Wright of me, as stopping only to collect Peterkins, we went from the house, down the long avenue of palms. "I've only seen a bit, but I tell him it's better than the first—surer, more mature, bigger in every way."
"She hasn't seen it," answered Bill, hastily. "I don't want her to for a while yet."
"Oh," Wright nodded understandingly, "I see."
Just what he saw was beyond me, but I said, with a little sigh,
"I'm so impatient—"