“Not a line. That’s something else no magazine can stand. Now that his novel has run its course Mr. Bousefield is distinctly disappointed.”
I fairly bounded in my place. “Then it may do?”
Mrs. Highmore looked bewildered. “Why so, if he finds it too dull?”
“Dull? Ralph Limbert? He’s as fine as a needle!”
“It comes to the same thing—he won’t penetrate leather. Mr. Bousefield had counted on something that would, on something that would have a wider acceptance. Ray says he wants iron pegs.” I collapsed again; my flicker of elation dropped to a throb of quieter comfort; and after a moment’s silence I asked my neighbour if she had herself read the work our friend had just put forth. “No,” she replied, “I gave him my word at the beginning, on his urgent request, that I wouldn’t.”
“Not even as a book?”
“He begged me never to look at it at all. He said he was trying a low experiment. Of course I knew what he meant and I entreated him to let me just for curiosity take a peep. But he was firm, he declared he couldn’t bear the thought that a woman like me should see him in the depths.”
“He’s only, thank God, in the depths of distress,” I replied. “His experiment’s nothing worse than a failure.”
“Then Bousefield is right—his circulation won’t budge?”
“It won’t move one, as they say in Fleet Street. The book has extraordinary beauty.”