"I still don't see, even so," Hubert icily replied, "exactly why I have to marry." Kenneth Boyd smiled unseen. "Because to widen your art, you must widen your idea of woman. If you really know one woman, they say, then you can know them all." A good deal of the author's self-esteem returned. He looked relieved. So that was all, was it? "If you know them all, as I do, by study," he answered, "you don't _want_ to know one." And now indeed Kenneth Boyd peered at him seriously, as at a patient very critical. "That sort of remark," he said, "just shows that you know nothing about women and ought to marry one." Hubert laughed. "Dear old Kenneth!" and there was pity in his voice. "Perhaps I should, if I knew nothing of them really. But I'm afraid I know too much." His counsellor made no reply. He always knew when he had failed. He also knew, from long experience, the only weapon that availed when once the hard line came round Brett's weak lips. He waited prudently, while they both smoked, and then he grasped it firmly. "Well, it's a pity, Hubert," he said gaily, as though he had abandoned his attempt and could afford by now to laugh at it, "because you'd not only solve the sister problem but--look at the advertisement! 'Famous Author Weds.' 'Mr. Hubert Brett, the Novelist, who is to be married this week. Photo by Bassano.' 'Mr. Brett's beautiful young wife.' 'Mrs. Brett, wife of the celebrated author, opens a bazaar.'" "Oh, shut up," cried Hubert quite youthfully, and made some pretence at throwing a tobacco-pouch, but did not seem displeased. "Then," went on the remorseless friend, "she is at parties every day, and universally admired. Who is she? everybody naturally asks. Why, the wife of Hubert Brett. Have you read his new novel? If not, do." "You must think me a conceited fool," Hubert put in, "if you imagine I swallow all that." Sometimes he suspected Boyd of sneering. Mrs. Boyd, he knew, disliked him. She had often tried a snub. She was a very brainless woman.... Kenneth Boyd dropped his manner of burlesque.