[124]
]The first question he asked me one morning before breakfast was:
“Have you read Sir Richard Calmady?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Well?” exclaimed he, a little impatiently, “well, what do you think of it?”
“An amazingly clever performance, but very horrible.”
“Yes, isn’t it?” he cried eagerly. “Horrible! Ghastly! And yet, they tell me, people are reading it.”
“Partly for that reason, no doubt.”
“But the public, the people, the great reading public—surely they will not respond to the appeal of a book of that nature?”
“The public, you must remember, has many hearts; it may well give one to Sir Richard Calmady.”
“But my public?”