Fairfield had published the novel anonymously partly from modesty, partly from a business sense that it was better to have his name clear than associated with a failure. He had been deterred from acknowledging the book after its success by the eagerness with which the public had set upon his characters and identified each with some well known person. If the scene of a novel be laid in a provincial city its characters must all be identified. That is the first intellectual duty of the readers of fiction. To look at a novel from a critical point of view is no longer in the least a thing about which any reader need concern himself; but it would be an omission unpardonably stupid were he to remain unacquainted with some original under the disguise of every character. A single detail is sufficient for identification. If a man in a tale have a wart on his nose, the intelligent reader should not rest until he think of a dweller in the town whose countenance is thus adorned. That single particular must thenceforth be held to decide the matter. If the man in the novel and the man in the flesh differ in every other particular, physical and mental, that is to be held as the cunning effort of the writer to disguise his real model. The wart decides it, and the more widely the copy departs in other characteristics from the chosen person the more evident is it that the novelist did not wish his original to be known. The more striking therefore is the shrewdness which has penetrated the mystery. The reader soddens in the consciousness of his own penetration as the sardine, equally headless, soaks in oil. Fairfield was now waiting for this folly of identification to pass before he gave his name to the novel, and in the mean time he was tasting the delight of a first literary success where the pecuniary returns allowed his vanity to glow without rebuke from his conscience. Fairfield was surprised, one morning not long after the polo game, by receiving a call from Mrs. Croydon. He knew her slightly, having met her now and then in society, and his belief that she was entirely ignorant of his share in her books might naturally invest her with a peculiar interest. She was a Western woman who had lived in the East but a few years, and her blunders in regard to Eastern society as they appeared in her original manuscripts had given him a good deal of quiet amusement. Why she should now have taken it upon herself to come to his chambers could only become evident by her own explanation. "You are probably surprised to see me here, Mr. Fairfield," she began, settling herself in a chair with the usual ruffling of rag-tag-and-bobbery without which she never seemed able to move. "I naturally should not have been vain enough to foresee that I should have such an honor," he responded, with his most elaborate society manner. She smirked, and nodded. "That is very pretty," she said. "Well, I'll tell you at once, not to keep you in suspense. I came on business."