"I want the book published as soon as possible. I have to make my name and I daresay I shall have to pay for making it!"
Hinde put the agreement down. "Oh, well, if you look at it like that," he said, "there's no more to be said, but you've done a silly thing!"
"I don't see it," John boldly asserted, though there was doubt in his mind.
"You'll see it some day!"
Hinde had parted from them earlier that evening than he had intended or they had expected. He made an excuse for leaving them by saying that he was tired and needed sleep after late nights of work, but he went because John's vanity had been hurt by his criticism of the agreement and also because he had said that John's book had no remarkable qualities. "I'm telling you the truth that you're always demanding, and I won't tell you anything else. You've been very anxious to tell it to other people and now you'll have a chance of hearing it yourself. Your book is not a good book. There are dozens like it published every year. The Sensation reviews them six-a-time in three or four hundred words. You may write good books some day, but The Enchanted Lover is just an ordinary, mediocre book. I think your tragedy is better!..."
"Well, it ought to be. It was written afterwards," John said, trying hard to speak without revealing resentment.
"Yes. Yes, of course!" Hinde murmured.
A little later, he had taken his leave of them.
"I wonder if he's right!" Eleanor said to John when he had gone.
"Of course he isn't," John tartly replied. "I believe he's jealous!"