Her hand lay along the flat arm of her rocking-chair; and once, when he had earnestly sustained a perfectly untenable theory concerning[139] success in literature, unconsciously she laid her fresh, smooth hand on his arm in impulsive protest.
"No," she said, "don't think that way. You are quite wrong. That is the road to failure!"
It was her first expression of disagreement, and he looked at her amazed.
"I am afraid you think I don't know anything about real literature and realism," she said, "but I do know a little."
"Every man must work out his salvation in his own way," he insisted, still surprised at her dissent.
"Yes, but one should be equipped by long practice in the art before definitely choosing one's final course."
"I am practiced."
"I don't mean theoretically," she murmured.
He laughed: "Oh, you mean mere writing," he said, gaily confident. "That, according to my theory, is not necessary to real experience. Literature is something loftier."
In her feminine heart every instinct of womanhood was aroused—pity for the youth of him, sympathy for his obtuseness, solicitude for his obstinacy, tenderness for the fascinating combination of boy and man, which might call itself[140] by any name it chose—even "author"—and go blundering along without a helping hand amid shrugs and smiles to a goal marked "Failure."