"Prentice, it never will be published through her."
"Get it back then. We'll try somewhere else."
"I'm afraid I'd have some trouble even to get it back now."
The mystification was getting too much for me. I shrugged my shoulders helplessly.
"I'm sorry to seem mysterious," said Paul, "but I really am telling you all I know myself. I even hoped you'd be able to throw some light on it. Because you know as well as I do how it started. She was enthusiastic, wasn't she? Would see no fault. She advised me to cut a good deal, it's true; but it wasn't for reasons I could object to. Anyway I didn't object. I was too proud and happy. For once in my life I tasted full appreciation, full understanding. Oh! I know what that look of yours means—that I've been taking a woman's gush for gospel. But, I can tell you, a thing rings true or false to me the first time. Do you know, Prentice, once we were motoring to some place near Aylesbury, and she went ten miles out of our way to see the church where Ffoulkes—the English parson, you know—was a curate once. I'd just picked on the place haphazard, and then described it later. You know my mania for exactness in trifles. Nothing would satisfy her but to get out of the car, have the church opened, and scout around the vicarage. Now, is that genuine or isn't it? I tell you, sir, she made the people of my own book live for me—used to invent comments for them upon things we heard, so much in character that I wondered how I could have forgotten them myself."
"And then——?"
"And then"—wearily—"the subject dropped. When I spoke about it, which wasn't often, her answers were as evasive as a woman's can be who, I think, can't lie. I'm not an insistent person, and she seemed to guess it. Money got short: she guessed that too—offered me advances on the publication. Ever so delicately, mind."
"That was the very time for the éclaircissement."
"I know, I know. Don't be too grim. For me it's almost impossible to throw any sort of kindness back in people's faces. It's been responsible for half the unhappiness of my life. Then she got me this thing on the Parthenon. Lord, how I hate it! and the people it brings me into contact with, and how they must hate me! Sleek young barristers, on the make—you know the sort—dine out every night and say, 'Dear lady.'"
"Ingram! I say 'dear lady' sometimes."