"Then I suppose you would deny the right of any artist to make use of living material?"
Knowles yawned. "I don't attempt to deny anything. I'm debating another question."
"What is that?" Wyndham smiled an uneasy muscular smile.
"Whether it isn't my duty to kick you, or rather to try to kick you, out of this room."
"Really; and what for? For the crime of writing a successful story?"
"For the perpetration of the most consummate piece of literary scoundrelism on record."
As that statement was accompanied by a nervous twitching of the lips which Wyndham was at liberty to take for a smile, he held out his hand to Knowles before saying good-night.
"My dear Knowles, if your notions of literary honour held good, there would be an end of realism."
"The end of realism, my dear Wyndham, is the thing of all others I most desire to see."
They had shaken hands; but Wyndham understood his friend, and he knew as certainly as if Knowles had told him so that Audrey Craven, the woman whom neither of them loved, had avenged herself. She had struck, through Laura, at the friendship of his life. He was also informed of one or two facts about himself which had not as yet come within the range of his observation. He consoled himself with the reflection that the temptations of genius are not those of other men. And perhaps he was right.