“Very bad? They’re the highest social offence I know; it ought—it absolutely ought; I’m quite serious—to be capital. If I knew I should be publicly thrashed else I’d manage to find the true word. The people who can’t—some of them don’t so much as know it when they see it—would shut their inkstands, and we shouldn’t be deluged by this flood of rubbish!” I shall not attempt to repeat everything that passed between us, nor to explain just how it was that, every moment I spent in his company, Mark Ambient revealed to me more and more the consistency of his creative spirit, the spirit in him that felt all life as plastic material. I could but envy him the force of that passion, and it was at any rate through the receipt of this impression that by the time we returned I had gained the sense of intimacy with him that I have noted. Before we got up for the homeward stretch he alluded to his wife’s having once—or perhaps more than once—asked him whether he should like Dolcino to read “Beltraffio.” He must have been unaware at the moment of all that this conveyed to me—as well doubtless of my extreme curiosity to hear what he had replied. He had said how much he hoped Dolcino would read _all_ his works—when he was twenty; he should like him to know what his father had done. Before twenty it would be useless; he wouldn’t understand them. “And meanwhile do you propose to hide them—to lock them up in a drawer?” Mrs. Ambient had proceeded. “Oh no—we must simply tell him they’re not intended for small boys. If you bring him up properly after that he won’t touch them.” To this Mrs. Ambient had made answer that it might be very awkward when he was about fifteen, say; and I asked her husband if it were his opinion in general, then, that young people shouldn’t read novels.