He looked at her, smiling.
"You are cross? Don't be cross,—you lose your enchanting expression! Well—you don't give yourself any airs, and you seem to play at literature like a child playing at a game: of course you make money by it,—but—you know better than I do that the greatest writers"—he emphasized the word "greatest" slightly—"never make money and are never popular."
"Does failure constitute greatness?" she asked, with a faintly satirical inflection in her sweet voice which he had never heard before.
"Sometimes—in fact pretty often," he replied, dabbing his brush busily on his canvas—"You should read about great authors—"
"I HAVE read about them," she said—"Walter Scott was popular and made money,—Charles Dickens was popular and made money—Thackeray was popular and made money—Shakespeare himself seemed to have had the one principal aim of making sufficient money enough to live comfortably in his native town, and he was 'popular' in his day—indeed he 'played to the gallery.' But he was not a 'failure'—and the whole world acknowledges his greatness now, though in his life-time he was unconscious of it."
Surprised at her quick eloquence, he paused in his work.
"Very well spoken!" he remarked, condescendingly—"I see you take a high view of your art! But like all women, you wander from the point. We were talking of Lord Blythe—and I say it would be far better for you to be—well!—his heiress!—for he might leave you all his fortune—than go on writing books."
Her lips quivered: despite her efforts, tears started to her eyes. He saw, and throwing down his brush came and knelt beside her, passing his arm round her waist.
"What have I said?" he murmured, coaxingly—"Innocent—sweet little love! Forgive me if I have—what?"—and he laughed softly—"rubbed you up the wrong way!"
She forced a smile, and her delicate white hands wandered caressingly through his hair as he laid his head against her bosom.