"I've' only improved it for the benefit of the Philistines," he said apathetically. "I hope you will forgive me."
"And now," she said at last, with a little hard air, "what do you propose?"
"I propose that if you approve these trifling alterations, we send the article to the British Review. And they are certain to take it."
Elfrida held out her hand for the manuscript, and he gave it to her. She looked at every page again. It was at least half re-written in Cardiff's small, cramped hand.
"Thank-you," she said slowly. "Thank-you very much. I have learned a great deal, I think, from what you have been kind enough to tell me, and to write here. But this, of course, so far as I am concerned in it, is a failure."
"Oh no!" he protested.
"An utter failure," she went on unnoticingly, "and it has served its purpose. There!" she cried with sudden passion, and in an instant the manuscript was flaming in the grate.
"Please—please go away," she sobbed, leaning the mantel in a sudden betrayal of tears; Cardiff, resisting the temptation to take her in his arms and bid her be comforted, went.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Mr. Rattray's proposal occurred as soon after the close of the season as he was able to find time to devote the amount of attention to it which he felt it required. He put it off deliberately till then, fearing that it might entail a degree of mental agitation on his part that would have an undesirable reflex action upon the paper. Mr. Rattray had never been really attracted toward matrimony before, although he had taken, in a discussion in the columns of the Age upon the careworn query, "Is Marriage a Failure?" a vigorous negative side under various pen-names which argued not only inclination, but experience. He felt, therefore, that he could not possibly predicate anything of himself under the circumstances, and that it would be distinctly the part of wisdom to wait until there was less going on. Mr. Rattray had an indefinite idea that in case of a rejection he might find it necessary to go out of town for some weeks to pull himself together again—it was the traditional course—and if such an exigency occurred before July the office would go to pieces under the pressure of events. So he waited, becoming every day more enthusiastically aware of the great advantage of having Miss Bell permanently connected with the paper under supervision which would be even more highly authorized than an editor's, and growing at the same time more thoroughly impressed with the unusual character of her personal charm. Elfrida was a "find" to Mr. Arthur Rattray from a newspaper point of view—a find he gave himself credit for sagaciously recognizing, and one which it would be expedient to obtain complete possession of before its market value should become known. And it was hardly possible for Mr. Rattray to divest himself of the newspaper point of view in the consideration of anything which concerned him personally. It struck him as uniquely fortunate that his own advantage and that of the Age should tally, as it undoubtedly might in this instance; and that, for Arthur Rattray, was putting the matter in a rather high, almost disinterested connection.