"Yes; I mean that. If you had no respect for your own reputation, you might have thought of Miss Craven's." "Excuse me, this is simply irrelevant nonsense, and most unworthy of you. Miss Craven, as you perfectly well know, is one manifestation of the eternal flirt. I seized on the type she belongs to, and individualised it." "You did nothing of the sort. You seized on the individual and put her into type--a very different thing. Do you imagine that life will ever be the same to that poor woman again? I never liked Miss Craven, but she was harmless, even nice, before you got hold of her and spoilt her, by making her think herself clever. Isn't that what happens to Laura?" "That--among other things." "Other things, also slavishly copied from Miss Craven. I recognise the faithfulness of your portraiture in all its details; so does she and everybody else." "Knowles, you talk like the lay fool. Surely you know how all fiction, worthy of the name, is made? I took what lay nearest at hand, as hundreds of novelists have done before me; though as for that, there's not an incident in the book that is not the purest fiction. You don't give me credit--I won't say for originality, but--for ordinary reconstructive ability." "I give you credit for having made the most of quite exceptional advantages. You best know how you obtained them." Wyndham reflected a moment, then looked Knowles in the face. "I assure you solemnly there was never any question of Miss Craven's honour." Knowles raised his eyebrows. "I didn't suppose for a moment there was. How about your own, though? Your notions of honour strike me as being quaintly original--rather more original than your Piccadyllic heroine." Knowles was not bad-tempered, but he was a frequent cause of bad temper in other people. It was with the utmost difficulty that Wyndham controlled himself for a final effort to evade the personal, and set the question at large on general grounds. "Then I suppose you would deny the right of any artist to make use of living material?" Knowles yawned. "I don't attempt to deny anything. I'm debating another question." "What is that?" Wyndham smiled an uneasy muscular smile. "Whether it isn't my duty to kick you, or rather to _try_ to kick you, out of this room." "Really; and what for? For the crime of writing a successful story?" "For the perpetration of the most consummate piece of literary scoundrelism on record." As that statement was accompanied by a nervous twitching of the lips which Wyndham was at liberty to take for a smile, he held out his hand to Knowles before saying good-night. "My dear Knowles, if _your_ notions of literary honour held good, there would be an end of realism." "The end of realism, my dear Wyndham, is the thing of all others I most desire to see."