“Good,” thought I. “It will no doubt be excellent; but be honest, and don’t insist that you’ve taken down life as it is; for you may have an astigmatism, for all you know, and life may not be at all what it has seemed to you while you were putting it down.”
“Yes, sir,” said Harley, leaning back in his chair and drawing a long breath, which showed his determination, “to the bitter end she shall go, through such complications as I choose to have her, encountering whatever villains I may happen to find most convenient, and to complete her story she shall marry the man I select for my hero, if he is as commonplace as the average salesman in a Brooklyn universal dry-goods emporium.”
Imagine my feelings if you can! Having gone as a self-appointed ambassador to the enemy to secure terms of peace, to return to find my principal donning his armor and daubing his face with paint for a renewal of the combat, was certainly not pleasant. What could I say to Marguerite Andrews if I ever met her in real life? How could I look her in the eye? The situation overpowered me, and I hardly knew what to say. I couldn’t beg Harley to stick to his realism and not indulge in compulsion, because I had often jeered at him for not infusing a little more of the dramatic into his stories, even if it had to be “lugged in by the ears,” as he put it. Nor was he in any mood for me to tell him of my breach of faith—the mere knowledge that she had promised to be docile out of charity would have stung his pride, and I thought it would be better, for the time, at least, to let my interview remain a secret. Fortune favored me, however. Kelly and the Professor entered the dining room at this moment, and the Professor held in his hand a copy of the current issue of The Literary Man, Messrs. Herring, Beemer, & Chadwick’s fortnightly publication, a periodical having to do wholly with things bookish.
“Who sat for this, Stuart?” called out the Professor, tapping the frontispiece of the magazine.
“Who sat for what?” replied Stuart, looking up.
“This picture,” said the Professor.
“It’s a picture of a finely intellectual-looking person with your name under it, Harley,” put in the Doctor.
“Oh—that,” said Harley. “It does flatter me a bit.”
“So does the article with it,” said Kelly. “Says you are a great man—man with an idea, and all that. Is that true, or is it just plain libel? Have you an idea?”
Harley laughed good-naturedly. “I had one once, but it’s lost,” he said. “As to that picture, they’re bringing out a book for me,” he added, modestly. “Good ad., you know.”