But presently the advertising columns of magazines and newspapers were heralding the year’s vernal output of enduring masterworks in the field of fiction: and readers were again assured that the great American novel had just been published at last, by any number of persons: and so, the autumnal predecessors of these new chefs d’œuvre passed swiftly into oblivion, via the brief respite of a “popular” edition. And naturally, Kennaston’s romance was forgotten, by all save a few pensive people. Some of them had found in this volume food for curious speculation.

That, however, is a matter to be taken up later.

VI
Suggesting Themes of Universal Appeal

SO Felix Kennaston saw his dream vulgarized, made a low byword; and he contemplated this travestying, as the cream of a sardonic jest, with urbanity. Indeed, that hour of notoriety seemed not without its pleasant features to Felix Kennaston, who had all a poet’s ordinary appetite for flattery. Besides, it was droll to read the “literary notes” which the Baxon-Muir people were industriously disseminating, by means of the daily journals, concerning Felix Kennaston’s personality, ancestry, accomplishments, recreations and preferences in diet. And then, in common with the old woman famed in nursery rhyme, he was very often wont to observe, “But, lawk a mercy on me! this is none of I!”

It was droll, too, to be asked for autographs, lectures, and for donations of “your wonderful novel.” It was droll to receive letters from remote mysterious persons, who had read his book, and had liked it, or else had disliked it to the point of being goaded into epistolary remonstrance, sarcasm, abuse, and (as a rule) erratic spelling. It troubled Kennaston that only riffraff seemed to have read his book, so far as he could judge from these unsolicited communications; and that such people of culture and education as might have been thrilled by it—all people whose opinions he might conceivably value—seemed never to write to authors....

And finally, it was droll to watch his wife’s reception of the book. To Kennaston his wife stayed always a not unfriendly mystery. She now could not but be a little taken aback by this revelation of his abilities, he reflected—with which she had lived so long without, he felt, appreciation of them—but certainly she would never admit to either fact. He doubted very much if Kathleen would ever actually read Men Who Loved Alison; on various pretexts she had deferred the pleasure, and seemed, with perverted notions of humor, to esteem it a joke that she alone had not read the book of which everybody was talking. Such was not Kennaston’s idea of humor, or of wifely interest. But Kathleen dipped into the volume here and there; and she assuredly read all the newspaper-notices sent in by the clipping-bureau. These she considered with profound seriousness.

“I have been thinking—you ought to make a great deal out of your next novel,” she said, one morning, over her grapefruit; and the former poet wondered why, in heaven’s name, it should matter to her whether or not the marketing of his dreams earned money, when they had already a competence. But women were thus fashioned....

“You ought to do something more up-to-date, though, Felix, something that deals with real life—”

“Ah, but I don’t particularly care to write about a subject of which I am so totally ignorant, dear. Besides, it isn’t for you to fleer and gibe at a masterpiece which you never read,” he airily informed her.