And finally, it was droll to watch his wife’s reception of the book. To Kennaston his wife stayed always a not unfriendly mystery. She now could not but be a little taken aback by this revelation of his abilities, he reflected—with which she had lived so long without, he felt, appreciation of them—but certainly she would never admit to either fact. He doubted very much if Kathleen would ever actually read _Men Who Loved Alison_; on various pretexts she had deferred the pleasure, and seemed, with perverted notions of humor, to esteem it a joke that she alone had not read the book of which everybody was talking. Such was not Kennaston’s idea of humor, or of wifely interest. But Kathleen dipped into the volume here and there; and she assuredly read all the newspaper-notices sent in by the clipping-bureau. These she considered with profound seriousness. “I have been thinking—you ought to make a great deal out of your next novel,” she said, one morning, over her grapefruit; and the former poet wondered why, in heaven’s name, it should matter to her whether or not the marketing of his dreams earned money, when they had already a competence. But women were thus fashioned.... “You ought to do something more up-to-date, though, Felix, something that deals with real life—” “Ah, but I don’t particularly care to write about a subject of which I am so totally ignorant, dear. Besides, it isn’t for you to fleer and gibe at a masterpiece which you never read,” he airily informed her. “I am saving it up for next summer, Felix, when I will have a chance to give every word of it the reverence it deserves. I really don’t have any time for reading nowadays. There is always something more important that has to be attended to—For instance, the gasoline engine isn’t working again, and I had to ’phone in town for Slaytor to send a man out to-day, to see what is the matter this time.”