Knowles suddenly looked grave. "Well, at the moment, I had much rather not tell you." "Really? Well, I suppose I shall know some day." Knowles looked as if he were struggling with an unpleasant duty, and it were getting the better of him. "Not from me, I'm afraid. It will be the first work of yours I have left unnoticed. As I can't review it favourably, I prefer not to notice it at all." "You surely don't suppose that I came here to fish for a review?" "I do not." "Thanks. I don't deny that I should have appreciated the public expression of your opinion, favourable or unfavourable. But I respect your scruples as far as I understand them. The only thing is----" He paused; it was his turn to feel uncomfortable. "Is what?" "Well, after the way you've delivered yourself on my other books, which are feebleness itself compared with this one, I must say your present attitude astonishes me." "I've given you my reasons for it." "No; that's what you've not done. Surely we've known each other too long for this foolishness. Of course, it's considerate of you not to damn me for the entertainment of the British public; but you know you're the only man in England whose judgment I care about, and I confess I'd like to have your private opinion--the usual honest and candid thing, you know. I'm not talking of gods, men, and columns." Knowles sat silent, frowning. "Oh, well, of course, if you'd rather not, there's nothing more to be said." "Not much." But Wyndham's palpitating egoism was martyred by this silence beyond endurance, and he burst out in spite of himself-- "But it's inconceivable to me, after the way you've treated my first crude work. You must have set up some new canons of art since then. Otherwise I should say you were inconsistent." But Knowles was not to be drawn out, if he could possibly help it. "Do you mind telling me one thing--have you anything to say against its form?" "Not a word. I admit that in form it's about as perfect as it well could be. I--er--" (he was beginning to feel that he could not help it) "object to your use of your matter." "What on earth do you mean?" "I mean what I say." "Please explain." "Very well. Since you so earnestly desire my honest and candid opinion, you shall have it. You remind me that I praised your earlier work, and suggest my inconsistency in not approving of your latest. My praise was sincere. I thought, and I have never changed my opinion, that the originality of your first books amounted to genius. Your last, however great its other qualities, has not that merit. It is, _I_ think, conspicuously destitute of imagination." "Do you deny its vitality--its faithfulness to nature?" "Certainly not. I object to it as a barefaced plagiarism from nature." "Then at least you'll admit that my heroine lives?" "She does, unfortunately. Wouldn't it have been better taste to wait till she was decently dead?" "Oh--I see. You mean _that_."