“Me! You’ll never see me in the valley of the shadow of matrimony. Would you spoil a good lover by making an indifferent husband of him? No, we never care for the things we have, and we always want those we haven’t. If I were married to Helen of Troy I’d be sneaking side glances at some little Mimi Pinson across the way. And by the same token, Madam, keep your eye on that husband of yours, for even now he’s looking pretty hard at some one else.”
And indeed I was, for there across the room was the girl from Naples, Lucrezia Poppolini.
CHAPTER VIII
“TOM, DICK AND HARRY”
The partner who managed the forwarding department of the firm of Madden & Company reported to the partner who represented its manufacturing end that the editor of the Babbler had accepted his story The Microbe, for one of his weekly Tabloid Tales. A cheque was enclosed for three guineas.
The manufacturing partner looked up in a dazed way from his manuscript, tapped his mighty brain to quicken recollection of the story in question, signified his approval, and bent again to his labours. Being in the heart of a novel he dreaded distraction. These necessary recognitions of every day existence made it harder for him to lift himself back again into his world of dream.
However, in his sustained fits of abstraction he had a worthy ally in the forwarding partner. Things came to his hand in the most magical way, and his every wish seemed anticipated. It was as if the whole scheme of life conspired to favour the flow of inspiration. Thus, when he was quietly told that lunch was ready, and instead of eating would gaze vacantly at the butter, there was no suggestion of his impending insanity; neither, when he poured tea into the sugar basin instead of into his cup, was there any demonstration of alarm.
On the other hand the forwarding partner might often have been seen turning over the English magazines displayed in front of the booksellers, and noting their office addresses. She was wonderfully persistent, but wofully unfortunate. Even the New York-London article, which the manufacturing partner had told her to send to the Gotham Gleaner, had been returned. The editor was a personal friend of his, and had the article been signed in his own name would probably have taken it. As it was it did not get beyond a sub-editor.
“Throw the thing into the fire,” he said savagely when she told him; but she promptly sent it to the Sunday Magazine section of the New York Monitor. After that she was silent on the subject of returned manuscripts.
I have forbidden Anastasia to sell any more embroidery, so that she no longer spends long and late hours over her needle. Instead she hovers about me anxiously, doing her work with the least possible commotion.