"Ah, have you heard of that? I am. I admire Addiper and agree with him. Form is everything--literature is only a matter of form. And a book is only a form of matter." "I see," she said, smiling. "But I adore Addiper myself, though I regret the future seems likely to be his. I have read all he has written. Every line is so lucid. The form is exquisite. But as for the matter----!" "No matter!" summed up John Beveridge, laughing heartily. "I am so glad you agree with me sometimes," said Ellaline. "Because it shows you don't think I am so very stupid after all." "Of course I don't--except when you get so enthusiastic about literary people and rave about Dibdin and Addiper and Blackwin and the rest. If you mixed with them, my little girl, as I have done, you would soon lose your rosy illusions. Although perhaps you are better with them." "Ah, then you're not a novelist yourself?" she said anxiously. "No, I am not. What makes you ask?" "Nothing. Only sometimes, from your conversation, I suspected you might be." "Thank you, Ellaline," he said, "for a very dubious compliment. No, I am afraid I must forego that claim upon your admiration. Unless I tell a lie and become a novelist by doing so. But then wouldn't it be the truth?" "Are you, then, a painter or a musician?" He shook his head. "No, I do not get my living by art." "Not of any kind?" "Not of any kind." "How _do_ you get it?" she asked simply, a candid light shining in the great gray eyes. "My father was a successful saddle-maker. He is dead." "Oh!" she said. "Leather has made me, from childhood up--it has chastised, supported, educated me, and given me the _entrée_ everywhere. So you see I cannot hold a candle to your demigods." "Ah, but there is nothing like leather," said Ellaline, and stroked the head in her lap reassuringly. The assurance permeated John Beveridge's frame like a pleasant cordial. All that was hard and leathery in him seemed to be soaked soft. Here, at last, was a woman who loved him for himself--an innocent, trusting woman in whose weakness a man might find strength. Her pure lips were like the wayside well at which the wearied wanderer from great stony cities might drink and be refreshed. And yet, delightful as her love would be in his droughty life, he felt that his could not prove less delightful to her. That he, John Beveridge, with the roses thrusting themselves into his eyes, should stoop to pick the simple little daisy at his feet, could not fail to fill her with an admiring gratitude that would add the last charm to her passion for him. But it was not till a week afterwards that the formal proposal, so long impending, broke. They were resting in a lane and discussing everything they didn't want to discuss, the unspoken playing with subtle sweetness about the spoken. "Have you read Mr. Gladstone's latest?" she asked at last. "No," he said; "has Mr. Gladstone ever a latest?"