"I thought it was rather good, didn't you, Johnnie?" "Very good indeed," he assented, warmly. "Though I do work occasionally." "Oh, of course, you silly thing, I wasn't bein' serious. I told you it was a joke. I know you must work a bit. Here comes the girl with supper. You'll excuse me, Johnnie, while I go and titivate myself. I sha'n't be a minute." Beatrice retired to the bedroom whence she could be heard humming over her beautification. "You're not meditating marriage, are you?" James mocked. The bachelor shook his head. "At the same time," he protested, stoutly, "I don't think you're entitled to sneer at Beatrice. Considering--" he was about to say "everything," but feeling that this would include his brother too pointedly he substituted, "the weather, she's wonderfully cheerful. And you know I've always insisted that these rooms are cramped." "Yes, well, when a popular success oils my palm, John, we'll move next door to you in Church Row." John wished that James would not always harp upon their respective fortunes: it made him feel uncomfortable, especially when he was sitting down to cold mutton. Besides, it was unfair; had he not once advised James to abandon criticism and take up--he had been going to suggest "anything except literature," but he had noticed James' angry dismay and had substituted "creative work." What had been the result? An outburst of contemptuous abuse, a violent renunciation of anything that approximated to his own work. If James despised his romantic plays, why could he not be consistent and despise equally the wealth they brought him? He honored his brother's intellectual sincerity, why could not his brother do as much for his? "What beats me," James had once exclaimed, "is how a man like you who professes to admire--no, I believe you're honest--who does admire Stendhal, Turgenev, Flaubert and Merimee, who recognizes the perfection of _Manon Lescaut_ and _Adolphe_, who in a word has taste, can bring himself to eructate the _Fall of Babylon_." "It's all a matter of knowing one's own limitations," John had replied. "I tried to write realistic novels. But my temperament is not realistic." "No, if it were," James had murmured, "you wouldn't stand my affectation of superiority." It was this way James had of once in a very long while putting himself in the wrong that used always to heal John's wounded generosity. But these occasional lapses--as he supposed his cynical brother would call them--were becoming less and less frequent, and John had no longer much excuse for clinging to his romantic reverence for the unlucky head of his family.