"Oh, throw away the fugitive husk and the rind outworn--the creed forgotten--the deed forborne--how does it go? Give a poor author a chance, now that you have sucked his commonplace book dry, and torn the heart out of his theories, butchered him to make a literary agent's holiday." "You _are_ unkind." "Don't say that. It is unworthy of you. Stale! like the plot of the new novel you propose we should work out together." "I am prepared to go all lengths to assert----" "Your powers of imagination. I don't doubt it. But I have been thinking it over, and I find it a ghastly, an impossible plot. No, it would never do, not even if we made a motor-motif of it. It won't go on all fours. It would not even begin to sell. It has none of the elements of popularity. To begin and end with, there's not an atom of passion about it, not even so much as would lie on twenty thousand pounds of radium, and you know how much that is!" "Don't imply that I am incapable of passion in that insulting way!" she said quite angrily. "It shall never be said----" "It will never be said, unless we run away and apply the test of Boulogne and social ostracism. Believe me, Paquerette, things are best as they are--going to be. There's true evolution in it. When the feast is over, you put out the fluttering candles, tear down the wreaths, open the windows. When the novel is done----" "I hate you to talk like this!" said she, making a cross face. "Women hate realism." "Women hate lukewarmness. Pull yourself together, George, and let us lay our heads together to make Scilly--look silly. He's mad just now, but it will pass off, he will get over it, and you will come down to us at 'The Hutch' as usual and more so. Dear old Scilly will be the first to climb down----" George shook his head. "No, no, _non bis in idem_. Not twice in the same place." (I wasn't sure if he was alluding to the kick Lord Scilly had given him or not.) "Go now, you sweet woman. I want to be alone. You are staid for." "Yes, yes, I must go. You remind me. The Count will be so deliciously irritated. Thanks so much, so very, very much, for all your help and timely assistance, your----" "Has the play been worth the scandal?" George asked her, while he was kissing her hand to hide how much he loathed her, and was glad she was going. He knew, as well as I knew, that she was the kind of woman who kicks away the ladder she has just got up by with a toss of her fairy foot, and that he would never be asked to "The Hutch" again. Mr. Aix would, more probably, because he may chance to review what George has helped her to write. And it seemed to me that she has been massaged so much or so long or something, that her cheeks are like flabby oysters, and her figure brought out in all the wrong places. She was too pretty to last kittenish and fluffy as she was when I saw her come out of the public-house that first day.