"Does anybody want to?" asked Hamil pleasantly.
"You mean that this is an age of trumpery romance?" demanded a heavy gentleman in dull disdain. "William Dean has erased all romance from modern life with one smear of his honest thumb!"
"The honest thumb that persistently and patiently rubs the scales from sapphire and golden wings in order to be certain that the vination of the Ornithoptera is still underneath, is not the digit of inspiration," suggested Hamil.
The disciple turned a dull brick-colour; but he betrayed neither his master nor himself.
"What, in God's name," he asked heavily, "is an ornithoptera?"
A very thin author, who had been listening and twisting himself into a number of shapes, thrust his neck forward into the arena and considered Hamil with the pale grimace of challenge.
"Henry Haynes?" he inquired—"your appreciation in one phrase, Mr. Hamil."
"In a Henry Haynes phrase?" asked Hamil good-humouredly.
"The same old calumny?" said the thin author, writhing almost off his chair.
"I'm afraid so; and the remedy a daily dose of verbifuge—until he gets back to the suffocated fount of inspiration. I am very sorry if I seem to differ from everybody, but everybody seems to differ from me, so I can't help it."