"You are going to be adapted? _A Clever Man's Son_?" "Translated," he said. "I may adapt. I _am_--translated." She smiled, but perceived almost at the same instant that she had not been intended to do so and that he had said it seriously. "I make a very good interview," he continued, lighting a cigarette; "I daresay you've noticed it. I never count an epigram or two wasted, though they do go into another chap's copy. That's where many men make a mistake; or very likely they can't invent the epigrams. Anyhow, they don't! The average interview is as dull as the average play. People think it's the journalists' fault, but it isn't. It's the fault of the deadly dull dogs who've got nothing to tell them. I ought to have gone a good deal further than I have: I've the two essential qualities for success--I'm an artist and a showman." "Don't!" she murmured; "Don't!" He laughed gaily. "I'm perfectly frank; I admit the necessities of life--I've told you so before. My mind never works so rapidly as it does in prospect of a good advertisement. There the fellow is, I expect!" he added, as the bell rang. "The study is quite in disorder for him, and there are a bunch of Parma violets and a flask of maraschino on the desk. I'm going to remark that maraschino and the scent of violets are indispensable to me when I work. He won't believe it, unless he is very young, but he'll be immeasurably obliged; that sort of thing looks well in an interview. Violets and maraschino are a graceful combination, I think." She did not reply; she sat pale and chagrined. He was renowned enough, and more than talented enough to dispense with these stage-tricks in the library. She knew it, and _he_ knew it, but he could not help them. Awhile ago they had caused her the cruellest pain; now she was more contemptuous than anything else, although she was still galled that he should display his foibles so candidly. "I am quite frank," he had said. She found such "frankness" a milestone on the road that she had travelled. "My dear child," said Field, "among the illusions of a man's youth is the belief that, if he goes through life doing his humble best in an unobtrusive way, the Press will say what a jolly fine fellow he is, and hold him up as a pattern to all the braggarts and poseurs who are blowing their own trumpets, and scraping on their own fiddles. Among the things he learns as he grows older is the fact that, if he does his best in an unobtrusive way, the Press will say nothing about him at all. The fiddle and the trumpet are essential; but it is possible to play them with a certain amount of refinement. It is even possible--though a clever man cannot dispense with the fiddle and the trumpet--for the fiddle and the trumpet to be played so dexterously that he may dispense with cleverness. I do not go to such lengths myself----" "You have no need to do so," she said coldly.