"It was good enough—of its kind. But it's a kind I hate. There's a craze about for sickly pathos, which, to me, is simply disgusting. In that man Ayre there's the making of a popular writer. Mark my words, and see if he doesn't make a hit. In a few months he will be all the rage—you see. And it is to make room for such men as Ayre that I shall be condemned to eat my heart out till I die."
Putting down her work, his wife came to him from the other side of the table.
"Geoffrey, don't say that!"
Tears were actually in her eyes.
"Philippa, what's the matter?" As he put his arms about her and drew her on to his knee, he felt that she was trembling. "Sweetheart, what is wrong?"
"Don't speak like that of Philip Ayre!"
"Not speak like that of Philip Ayre! Why, lady, do you hold a brief for him? You silly child! It's only a foolish way I have. But if you could only realise how I long, and long, and strive, and strive, to stand up with the best of them, you would understand how it galls me to find how I am thrust aside by men whose work seems to me to be so poor a thing. For their work's sake, I almost begin to hate the man."
"Geoffrey! Geoffrey! Not that! not that!"
Flinging both her arms about his neck, she burst into an hysterical flood of weeping—she who never cried.
"Dear heart!—tell me!—what is wrong!—Philippa! Philippa!—my wife."