'I think everything in this house is interesting,' the Dictator declared in all sincerity.
Captain Sarrasin talked but little. He was quite content to hear his wife talk with the Dictator and to know that she was pleased, and to believe that the Dictator was pleased with her. That, however, he assumed as a matter of course—everybody must be pleased with that woman.
After dinner the Dictator studied the so-called autobiography. It was a marvellously well-ordered piece of composition as far as it went. It was written in the neatest of manuscript, and had evidently been carefully copied and re-copied so that the volume now in his hands was about as good as any print. It was all chaptered and paged most carefully. It was rich with capital pencil sketches and even with etchings. There was no trace of any other hand but the one that he could find out in the whole volume. He greatly admired the drawings and etchings.
'These are yours, of course?' he said, turning his eyes on Mrs. Sarrasin.
'Oh, yes; I like to draw for this book. I hope it will have a success. Do you think it will?' she asked wistfully.
'A success in what way, Mrs. Sarrasin? Do you mean a success in money?'
'Oh, no; we don't care about that. I suppose it will cost us some money.'
'I fancy it will if you have all these illustrations, and of course you will?'
'Yes, I want them to be in, because I think I can show what danger my husband has been in better with my pencil than with my pen—I am a poor writer.'
'Then the work is really all your own?'