"It isn't," said Maxwell. "I failed on that. I shall try a comic motive."
"Oh!" said Louise, in the concessive tone people use, when they do not know but they have wronged some one. She spiritually came back to him, but materially she rose to go away and leave him. She stooped for the letter he had dropped out of the hammock and gave it him. "Don't you want this?"
"Oh, thank you! I'd forgotten it." He glanced at the superscription, "It's from Pinney. You ought to know Pinney, Miss Hilary, if you want the true artistic point of view."
"Is he a literary man?"
"Pinney? Did you read the account of the defalcation in the Events—when it first came out? All illustrations?"
"That? I don't wonder you didn't care to read his letter! Or perhaps he's your friend—"
"Pinney's everybody's friend," said Maxwell, with an odd sort of relish. "He's delightful. I should like to do Pinney. He's a type." Louise stood frowning at the mere notion of Pinney. "He's not a bad fellow, Miss Hilary, though he is a remorseless interviewer. He would be very good material. He is a mixture of motives, like everybody else, but he has only one ambition: he wants to be the greatest newspaper man of his generation. The ladies nearly always like him. He never lets five minutes pass without speaking of his wife; he's so proud of her he can't keep still."
"I should think she would detest him."
"She doesn't. She's quite as proud of him as he is of her. It's affecting to witness their devotion—or it would be if it were not such a bore."
"I can't understand you," said Louise, leaving him to his letter.