"No, no, no--not others--only yourself, my dear young lady," said Marion paternally, in a way which clearly meant that she had expressed the complete truth, being a rude woman, but that he, being a polite man, could never admit it. As a matter of fact, Marion was not in the least sick of _Christina_, quite the reverse. "You see," he went on, playing with the elastic band of one of the packets of MS., "you can't be expected to know these things. But no professed novelist--no one of any experience--no one, allow me to say so, except a young lady, could possibly have taken such an overdose of novel-writing as you have. Why, you have done in six weeks what ought to have taken six months! The result, naturally, is that you have lost all sense of proportion and quality; you really can't see your novel any longer, that's why you feel depressed about it." Lady Tal was not at all mollified. "That wasn't a reason for making me believe I was going to be George Eliot and Ouida rolled into one, with the best qualities of Goethe and Dean Swift into the bargain," she exclaimed. Marion frowned, but this time internally. He really had encouraged Lady Tal quite unjustifiably. He doubted, suddenly, whether she would ever get a publisher; therefore he smiled, and remarked gently: "Well, but--in matters of belief, there are two parties, Lady Tal. Don't you think you may be partly responsible for this--this little misapprehension?" Lady Tal did not answer. The insolence of the Ossian was roused. She merely looked at Marion from head to foot; and the look was ineffably scornful. It seemed to say: "This is what comes of a woman like me associating with Americans and novelists." "I've not lost patience," she said after a moment; "don't think that. When I make up my mind to a thing I just do it. So I shall finish _Christina_, and print her, and publish her, and dedicate her to you. Only, catch me ever writing another novel again!--and"--she added, smiling with her closed teeth as she extended a somewhat stiff hand to Marion--"catch you reading another novel of mine again either, now that you've made all the necessary studies of me for _your_ novel!" Marion smiled politely. But he ran downstairs, and through the narrow little paved lane to the ferry at San Vio with a bent head. He had been a fool, a fool, he repeated to himself. Not, as he had thought before, by exposing Lady Tal to disappointment and humiliation, but by exposing himself.