To Ruth Temple, who by some sorcery guessed his secret before its public revelation, Graves went with his laurels thick upon him.
"How does it feel to be a celebrity?" he said, meeting her volley of questions collectively. "Much like a breakfast cereal, a patent medicine, or a soap. Byron said that the first thing which sounded like fame to him was the tidings that he was read on the banks of the Ohio. It's different nowadays. The first taste usually comes from seeing your name placarded on a dead wall between some equally distinguished rolled oats and a new five-cent cigar. Personally I think I first saw the 'gypsy' face to face when the Hon. Seneca Bowers told me that save 'Betsey and I Are Out' he had read no poem but mine in twenty years. That was my 'Ohio,' though of course Mrs. Hilliard's request for an author's reading at the Culture Club was an annunciation in itself. Am I becoming fabulously rich from my royalties? Alas! no; I must buy too many presentation copies for people who fancy that I obtain gratis really more than I know what to do with. Shall I write for the stage? I could as easily write a cook book. Do I give my autograph? Always, if a stamped envelope is enclosed. One of our hardest-working presidents daily set apart a time for autographs; why then should a popular writer pretend that it bores him? He is secretly tickled, and probably collects autographs himself."
Ruth laughed, but denied that he had exhausted her questions.
"Why did you withhold your name from your masterpiece?" she asked.
"Partly because it was my masterpiece,—it would be false modesty to deny that I know it,—and I had some notion of digging a pit for the critics. But the main reason was to confound my Uncle Peter."
"I didn't know you had an uncle."
"I haven't in the flesh. 'Uncle Peter' is generic—a polite lumping together of my chronic fault-finders within the family and without. You know him. Both masculine and feminine, he's eternally an old woman. Everybody knows Uncle Peter, the first to censure and the last to praise. Now, as I've been his especial tidbit and awful example for years, I had to school myself to the thought of snatching the daily morsel of gossip from his mouth. The murder out, Uncle Peter's grief is pitiful. How much sharper than a serpent's tooth is a prophecy of evil unfulfilled! It's not that he considers I've gone to work, incorrigible vagabond that I am; it's the fact that my intolerable idling has produced money which sets his teeth on edge—money, the golden calf of Uncle Peter's narrow idolatrous soul."
Ruth had no liking for his moments of acid mockery.
"Don't let Uncle Peter overshadow your friends," she warned.
"I'll not," promised the man. "And you—by what witchery of friendship did you find me out?" He shifted his seat, seeking her eyes. "Ruth, was it love?"