Mr. Whitely reddened and bit his lip, for which he is hardly to be blamed. But he only bowed slightly in reply, leaving the inference in your minds that he was a Philomath. How the man dares so often to— The striking clock tells me it is later than I thought, and I must stop. Good-night, dear heart. XXI _March 12._ Our talk at the Philomathean and Mr. Whitely’s tacit assumption of membership had their penalty for me,—a penalty which, to reverse the old adage, I first thought an undisguised blessing. When we separated, he asked me to dinner the following evening, to fill in a place unexpectedly left vacant; and as I knew, from a chance allusion, that you were to be there, I accepted a courtesy at his hands. Although there were several celebrities at the meal, it fell to my lot to sit on your right; my host, who took you down, evidently preferring to have no dangerous rival in your attention. But Mrs. Blodgett, who sat on his other side, engaged him as much as she chose, and thus gave me more of your time than I should otherwise have had. If you knew how happy it made me that, whenever she interrupted his monopoly of you, instead of making a trialogue with them, you never failed to turn to me! “I have just re-read Mr. Whitely’s book,” you remarked, in one of these interruptions, “and I have been trying to express to him my genuine admiration for it. I thought of it highly when first I read it, last autumn, but on a second reading I have become really an enthusiast.” I suppose my face must have shown some of the joy your words gave me, for you continued, “Clearly, you like it too, and are pleased to hear it praised. But then it’s notorious that writers are jealous of one another! Tell me what you think of it?” I tried to keep all bitterness out of my voice as I laughed. “Think how unprofessional it would be in me to discuss my employer’s book: if I praised it, how necessary; if I disparaged it, how disloyal!” “You are as unsatisfactory as Mr. Whitely,” you complained. “I can’t get him to speak about it, either. He smiles and bows his head to my praise, but not a word can he be made to say. Evidently he has a form of modesty—not stage fright, but book fright—that I never before encountered. Every other author I have met was fatiguingly anxious to talk about his own writings.” “Remember in our behalf that a book stands very much in the same relation to a writer that a baby does to its mother. We are tolerant of her admiration; be equally lenient to the author’s harmless prattle.” “I suppose, too,” you went on, “that the historian is less liable to the disease, because his work is so much less his own flesh and blood; so much less emotional than that of the poet or novelist.”