Lucy. And will people know who the “Lady Luce” is?
Harold. They will some day. The dedication in my next book shall be “To my Lady Wife.”
Lucy. I wonder if I shall ever be that. It seems so long coming.
Harold. I don't mind when it is—to-morrow, if you like.
Lucy. Don't talk nonsense, although it is my fault for beginning it. And now sit down—no, here in the arm-chair—and you shall have some nice tea.
[She makes and pours out the tea as Harold talks.]
Harold. You won't have to wait long if this proves a success: and it will be one. I know it; I feel it. It isn't only that everybody who has read it, likes it; it's something else that I can't describe, not even to you; a feeling inside, that—call it conceit if you like, but it isn't conceit; it isn't conceit to feel confidence in oneself. Why, look at the trash, the arrant trash, that succeeds every day; you will say, perhaps, that it succeeds because it is trash, that trash is what people want—they certainly get it. But no book that ever had real stuff in it has failed yet, and I feel that—Ha! ha! the same old feeling mentioned above. Don't think me an awful prig, Luce. I don't talk to anybody else as I do to you; and if you only knew what a relief it is to me to let myself go a bit occasionally, you would excuse everything.
Lucy. You have a right to be conceited.
Harold. Not yet. I have done nothing yet; but I mean to. [Takes up the book.] I wonder what will become of you and your fellows; what will be your future? Will you one day adorn the shelves of libraries, figure in catalogues of “Rare books and first editions,” and be contended for by snuffy, long-clothed bibliomaniacs, who will bid one against the other for the honour of possessing you? Or will you descend to the tables of secondhand book-stalls marked at a great reduction; or lie in a heap, with other lumber, outside the shop-front, all this lot sixpence each, awaiting there, uncared for, unnoticed, and unknown, your ultimate destination, the dust-hole?
Lucy. You are horrid. What an idea!