We had both got up, quickened by the full sound of it all, and he had lighted a cigarette. I had taken a fresh one, and, with an intenser smile, by way of answer to my exclamation, he touched it with the flame of his match. "If I weren't better I shouldn't have thought of _that_!" He flourished his epistle in his hand. "I don't want to be discouraging, but that's not true," I returned. "I'm sure that during the months you lay here in pain you had visitations sublime. You thought of a thousand things. You think of more and more all the while. That's what makes you, if you will pardon my familiarity, so respectable. At a time when so many people are spent you come into your second wind. But, thank God, all the same, you're better! Thank God, too, you're not, as you were telling me yesterday, 'successful.' If _you_ weren't a failure, what would be the use of trying? That's my one reserve on the subject of your recovery--that it makes you 'score,' as the newspapers say. It looks well in the newspapers, and almost anything that does that is horrible. 'We are happy to announce that Mr. Paraday, the celebrated author, is again in the enjoyment of excellent health.' Somehow I shouldn't like to see it." "You won't see it; I'm not in the least celebrated--my obscurity protects me. But couldn't you bear even to see I was dying or dead?" my companion asked. "Dead--_passe encore_; there's nothing so safe. One never knows what a living artist may do--one has mourned so many. However, one must make the worst of it; you must be as dead as you can." "Don't I meet that condition in having just published a book?" "Adequately, let us hope; for the book is verily a masterpiece."