“What man?”
“The fellow who wrote this book! He is a New York lawyer—that is plain. His insight of legal chicanery and his apt use of technical law terms show that, if his clever reasoning did not. A Columbia graduate, too! I’ll go bail for that. And a society man. By George! that narrows the case down pretty well. I don’t know a man at the city bar, though, who has sufficient literary skill to turn out such a piece of work as this. ‘John C. Hart’ is a pseudonym, of course—but there may be a meaning in it.”
He fell into a muse over the title page, knotting his brows and plucking at his lower lip while he scanned the name.
Agnes’ breath came quick; her head swam as in seasickness. She shook herself mentally and tried to speak as usual:
“It may be another case of George Eliot, alias Mary Anne Evans; or Charles Egbert Craddock, alias Miss Murfree.”
“Preposterous! There isn’t a feminine touch in the book. And no woman of the education and refinement of this writer could know anything of the scenes and motives he describes. Men can paint women faithfully. Women who try to depict men show us up as hybrids, creatures of their own sex disguised in masculine habiliments. Ready-made clothes at that, baggy at the knees and short at the wrists. I should not like, however, to know a woman who could write ‘The Story of Walter King.’”
“It does not impress me as coarse!” Agnes was nerved by instinctive resentment to say.
“Not a symptom of coarseness about it. But it is virile—and that your woman author ought never to be! Any man might be proud of having written this novel. Any true, modest woman would blush to be accused of it. You see the difference?”
“I see the difference between the patient I left three hours ago, and the one I find here now!” interjected the nurse bluntly.
She had come in while Barton was speaking, and had her hand on Mrs. Ashe’s pulse.