"I'm afraid that must be withered by this time."
"It is," said Wade. There was no reply to this, and he looked up to find her gazing idly at the pages of her book, which she was ruffling with her fingers. "I'm keeping you from reading," he said.
"No, I don't want to read. It's not interesting."
"May I see what it is?" She held the cover up for his inspection.
"Have you read it?" she asked. He shook his head slowly.
"I don't read many novels, and those I do read I forget all about the next minute. Of course I try to keep up with the important ones, the ones folks always ask you about, like Mrs. Humphrey Ward's and Miss Wharton's."
"Yes? And do you like them?"
"I suppose so," he replied, dubiously. "I think the last one I read was 'The Fruit of Mirth.' I didn't care very much for that, did you? If I'd had my way I'd have passed around the morphine to the whole bunch early in the book."
Eve smiled. "I'm afraid you wouldn't care for this one either," she said, indicating the book in her lap. "I heard this described as 'forty chapters of agony and two words of relief.'"
"'The End,' eh? That was clever. You write stories yourself, don't you?"