"No matter!" summed up John Beveridge, laughing heartily.
"I am so glad you agree with me sometimes," said Ellaline. "Because it shows you don't think I am so very stupid after all."
"Of course I don't—except when you get so enthusiastic about literary people and rave about Dibdin and Addiper and Blackwin and the rest. If you mixed with them, my little girl, as I have done, you would soon lose your rosy illusions. Although perhaps you are better with them."
"Ah, then you're not a novelist yourself?" she said anxiously.
"No, I am not. What makes you ask?"
"Nothing. Only sometimes, from your conversation, I suspected you might be."
"Thank you, Ellaline," he said, "for a very dubious compliment. No, I am afraid I must forego that claim upon your admiration. Unless I tell a lie and become a novelist by doing so. But then wouldn't it be the truth?"
"Are you, then, a painter or a musician?"
He shook his head. "No, I do not get my living by art."
"Not of any kind?"