“I don’t know. I’m not so sure. That is, I’m not so sure it oughtn’t to be a serious enterprise and a hobby. The world’s best work is always done for love—that’s another way of calling it a hobby—you see what I mean—Nietzsche has something about it somewhere or other—or if he hasn’t Ruskin has——”
Any number of effective replies had been open to Mr. Strong, but he had used none of them. Instead his eyes had given as it were a flick to Amory’s face. The proprietor’s proprietor had continued indignantly.
“It ruins the whole effect! It’s unspeakably vulgar! After that glowing, that impassioned Foreword—this! Hardly a month ago that lovely apostrophe to Truth Naked—that beautiful image of her stark and innocent on our banners but with a forest of bright bayonets bristling about her—and now this! It’s revolting!”
But Mr. Strong had himself written that impassioned Foreword, and knew all about it. Again he had given his proprietor’s wife that quietly humouring look.
“Do you mean that the ‘Novum’s’ going to refuse advertisements?”
“I mean that I blue-pencilled that one myself.”
“And what about the others—the ‘Eden’ and the Suffrage Shop and Wyron’s Lectures?”
“They’re different. They are the Cause. You said yourself that the ‘Novum’ was going to be a sort of generalissimo, and these the brigades of whatever they’re called. They are, at any rate, doing the Work. Is that doing any Work, I should like to know?”
Mr. Strong had refrained from flippancy.—“I see what you mean,” he had replied equably. “At the same time, if you’re going to refuse advertisements the thing’s going to cost a good deal more money.”