'Rubbish! It is because you are too stupid or too careless to find out the weak point.'
'To return, Alec: I have failed. I have no influence at all upon this girl. I have spent hours and hours in singing your praise. I have enlarged upon the absolute necessity of giving you a rest from business cares. I have proposed that she and I together—that was the way I put it—should buy a share in the paper, and that she should advance my half. Oh! I grew eloquent on the glory that two women thus coming to the relief of a man like yourself would achieve in after years. I tried to speak from my heart, Alec.' The woman caught his hand, but he drew it away. 'Oh! you deserve no help. You are hard-hearted, and you are selfish: you have broken every promise you ever made me: you spend all that you have in selfish pleasures: you leave me almost without assistance——'
'When I have got you into the easiest and most luxurious berth that can be imagined; when I have asked you for nothing but a simple——'
'Yes, dear Alec, but you see that an honest acknowledgment would be worth all this goodness. Well, I say that I spoke from my heart, because in spite of all I was proud of my man—mine, yes, though Philippa still imagines, poor wretch!'
'Do leave my cousin's name out of it, will you, Zoe?' he said, a little less roughly.
'I am proud of the man who is acknowledged to be the cleverest man in London.' She got up and began to walk about the studio. She stopped before the picture. 'Do you know, Alec—I am not a critic, but I can feel a thing—that this is quite the best work you have ever done. Oh! Those waves, they live and dance; and those birds, they fly; and the air is so warm and soft!—you are a great painter. Odd! your girl is curiously like Armorel. One would fancy your model was Armorel at sixteen or so—a lovely girl she must have been then, and a lovely woman she is now.' Zoe left the picture and began to look at the papers on the table. 'What is this—the new story? Is it good?'
'To you, Zoe, I may confess that it is as good as anything I have ever done.'
'You are really splendid, Alec! What is this?' She took up a very neatly written page in his handwriting. 'Poetry?'
'Those are some verses for next week's journal. I think there is no falling off there, Zoe.'
'Have you got another copy?'