"You really think it good?" he asked. "Better than the last? You don't think they'll say I haven't fulfilled its promise? Honest Injun, you know?" "Seems very strong," said Turquand, sucking his pipe. "No, I don't think you need tremble, if these pages aren't the top strawberries. Rather Meredithian, that line about her eyes in the pause, isn't it? You remember the one I mean, of course?" Kent laughed gaily. "It came like that," he said. "Fact! Does it look like a deliberate imitation? Would you alter it? Oh, I say, talking of lines, I'm ill with envy. 'Occasionally a girl, kissed from behind as she stretched to reach a honeysuckle, rent with a scream the sickly-coloured, airless evening.' The 'sickly-coloured, airless evening.' Isn't it great? What do you think of that for atmosphere? And he's got it with the two adjectives. But the 'honeysuckle'--the 'honeysuckle' with that 'sickly-coloured, airless'--you can smell it!" "Whose?" "Moore's. I opened the book the other day, and it was the first thing I saw. I had been hammering at a lane and summer evening paragraph myself, and when I read that, I knew there wasn't an impression in all my two hundred words." "You shouldn't let him read, Mrs. Kent, while he has work on the stocks," said the journalist. "I know this phase in him of old." "Yes, and you used to be very rude," put in Kent perfunctorily. "My wife isn't! I can be depressed now without being abused." Cynthia laughed. She was very pretty where she lay back in the rocker by the window. Her face was a trifle drawn now, but she looked girlish and graceful still. She looked a wife of whom any man might be proud. "You didn't mention it," she said; "I didn't know. But I don't see anything wonderful in what you quoted, I must say! Do you, Mr. Turquand? I'm sure 'sickly-coloured, airless, doesn't mean anything at all." "It means a good deal to me," said Kent. "I'd give a fiver to have found that line." "Cousins wouldn't give you any more for your book if you had," said Turquand. "Put money in thy purse! I suppose you'll stick to Cousins?" "Why not? Life's too short to find a publisher who'll pay you what you think you're worth; and Cousins are affable. Affability covers a multitude of sins, and there's a lot of compensation in a compliment. Cousins senior told me I had a 'great gift.'" "Perhaps he was referring to his hundred pounds." "He was referring to my talent, though I says it as shouldn't. That was your turn, Cynthia!" "Yes," said Turquand; "a wife's very valuable at those moments, isn't she, Mrs. Kent?" "How do you mean?" said Cynthia, who found the conversational pace inconveniently rapid. "I shall send it to Cousins," went on Humphrey hastily; "and I want two hundred and fifty this time." "They won't give it you." "Why not?" "Partly because you'll accept less. And you haven't gone into a second edition, remember." "Look at the reviews!"