“I am not sure it isn’t best so,” she said—“for you can help the struggling ones to live——”
“Don’t stab me with that weapon”—he winced—“it is just exactly what I have forgotten to do.” And he added half to himself: “Fame has been my very God.”
Loud laughter filled the room.
Noll yawned drowsily at the far end of the attic.
“But how do you tickle a trout?” he asked.
Caroline repressed a desire to laugh.
She shrugged her shoulders:
“Ah, Paul—you still worship at the old shrine—Fame, Posterity, and all the Clap-Trap!... After all, the ages have their own intellectuals?”
“I do not think we should wholly neglect posterity,” he said largely. He was deft in throwing the catchpenny. “We ought, if we paint a great picture, to paint it with colours that will not decay.”
She smiled sadly, flipped over some proofs, and read: