"Ah, that is not what I am going to tell you," she said archly. "It is another of the great secrets of my age. You remember that book you liked so much—The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft?"
"Yes!" he said wonderingly.
"Well, I wrote it!"
"You!" he exclaimed, startled. His image of her seemed a pillar of sand upon which the simoom had burst. This fresh, simple maiden a complex literary being, a slave of the midnight lamp.
"Yes, I—I am Andrew Dibdin—the authoress who drew tears from your eyes."
"You, Andrew Dibdin!" he repeated mechanically.
She nodded her head with a proud and happy smile. "I knew you would be pleased—but I wanted you to love me, not my book."
"I love both," he exclaimed. The new conceptions had fitted themselves into the old. He saw now what the charm of the little novel was—the book was Ellaline between covers. He wondered he had not seen it before. The grace, the purity, the pathos, the sweet candor, the recollections of a childhood spent on the great waters in the company of kindly mariners—all had flowed out at the point of her pen. She had put herself into her work. He felt a subtle jealousy of the people who bought her on the bookstalls for a shilling—or even for ninepence at the booksellers'. He wanted to have her all to himself. He experienced a mad desire to buy up the edition. But there would be a new one. He realized the feelings of Othello. Oh, if he could but arrest her circulation!
"If you knew how happy it made me to hear you say you love my book!" she replied. "At first I hated you because you sneered at it. All my friends love my books—and I wanted you to be a friend of mine."
"I am more than that," he said exultantly. "And I want to love all your books. What else have you written?"