“Don’t say that; I don’t deserve it; it scorches me,” he protested with eyes suddenly grave and glowing. “The ‘one’ is of course one’s self, one’s conscience, one’s idea, the singleness of one’s aim. I think of that pure spirit as a man thinks of a woman he has in some detested hour of his youth loved and forsaken. She haunts him with reproachful eyes, she lives for ever before him. As an artist, you know, I’ve married for money.” Paul stared and even blushed a little, confounded by this avowal; whereupon his host, observing the expression of his face, dropped a quick laugh and pursued: “You don’t follow my figure. I’m not speaking of my dear wife, who had a small fortune—which, however, was not my bribe. I fell in love with her, as many other people have done. I refer to the mercenary muse whom I led to the altar of literature. Don’t, my boy, put your nose into _that_ yoke. The awful jade will lead you a life!” Our hero watched him, wondering and deeply touched. “Haven’t you been happy!” “Happy? It’s a kind of hell.” “There are things I should like to ask you,” Paul said after a pause. “Ask me anything in all the world. I’d turn myself inside out to save you.” “To ‘save’ me?” he quavered. “To make you stick to it—to make you see it through. As I said to you the other night at Summersoft, let my example be vivid to you.” “Why your books are not so bad as that,” said Paul, fairly laughing and feeling that if ever a fellow had breathed the air of art—! “So bad as what?” “Your talent’s so great that it’s in everything you do, in what’s less good as well as in what’s best. You’ve some forty volumes to show for it—forty volumes of wonderful life, of rare observation, of magnificent ability.” “I’m very clever, of course I know that”—but it was a thing, in fine, this author made nothing of. “Lord, what rot they’d all be if I hadn’t been I’m a successful charlatan,” he went on—“I’ve been able to pass off my system. But do you know what it is? It’s cartonpierre.” “Carton-pierre?” Paul was struck, and gaped. “Lincrusta-Walton!” “Ah don’t say such things—you make me bleed!” the younger man protested. “I see you in a beautiful fortunate home, living in comfort and honour.” “Do you call it honour?”—his host took him up with an intonation that often comes back to him. “That’s what I want _you_ to go in for. I mean the real thing. This is brummagem.” “Brummagem?” Paul ejaculated while his eyes wandered, by a movement natural at the moment, over the luxurious room. “Ah they make it so well to-day—it’s wonderfully deceptive!”