“Yes?”
“And they have been talking to me about it; they have been discussing the characters in it. They like it because they say they can understand just how every one felt. They like the hero, and Mrs. Simpson cried over the last scene. She thinks you have managed the heroine’s character beautifully. Mr. Simpson wondered whether you really believe in hypnotism. They both said they felt as if they were living it.”
Ray listened with a curious mixture of pleasure and of pain. He knew very well that it was not possible for such people as the Simpsons to judge his story with as fine artistic perception as that old society woman who thought he meant to make his characters cheap and ridiculous, and in the light of this knowledge their praise galled him. But then came the question whether they could not judge better of its truth and reality. If he had made a book which appealed to the feeling and knowledge of the great, simply-conditioned, sound-hearted, common-schooled American mass whom the Simpsons represented, he had made his fortune. He put aside that other question, which from time to time presses upon every artist, whether he would rather please the few who despise the judgment of the many, or the many who have no taste, but somehow have in their keeping the touchstone by which a work of art proves itself a human interest, and not merely a polite pleasure. Ray could not make this choice. He said dreamily: “If Mr. Brandreth could only find out how to reach all the Simpsons with it! I believe a twenty-five-cent paper edition would be the thing after all. I wish you could tell me just what Mr. and Mrs. Simpson said of the book; and if you can remember what they disliked as well as what they liked in it.”
Peace laughed a little. “Oh, they disliked the wicked people. They thought the hard old father of the heroine was terrible, and was justly punished by his daughter’s death. At the same time they thought you ought to have had her revive in time to seize the hero’s hand, when he is going to shoot himself, and keep him from giving himself a mortal wound. The cousin ought to get well, too; or else confess before he dies that he intended to throw the hero over the cliff, so that it could be made out a case of self-defence. Mr. Simpson says that could be done to the satisfaction of any jury.”
Ray laughed too. “Yes. It would have been more popular if it had ended well.”
“Perhaps not,” Peace suggested. “Isn’t it the great thing to make people talk about a book? If it ended well they wouldn’t have half so much to say as they will now about it.”
“Perhaps,” Ray assented with meek hopefulness. “But, Peace, what do you say about it? You’ve never told me that yet. Do you really despise it so much?”
“I’ve never said that I despised it.”
“You’ve never said you didn’t, and by everything that you’ve done, you’ve left me to think that you do. I know,” said the young man, “that I’m bringing up associations and recollections that must be painful to you; they’re painful and humiliating to me. But it seems to me that you owe me that much.”
“I owe you much more than that,” said the girl. “Do you think that I forget—can forget—anything—all that you’ve been to us?”