ften told you I simply don't know what to do
with my allowance: it's eating its head off in the bank! Surely we're
not so hard up as all that? I hate the whole idea."

"What whole idea?" he asked coldly. One did look for encouragement
from one's own wife. He got up to leave her.

"This pot-boiler, as you call it; the title; the way you talk about it;
everything. It's all so different, and I've been so proud of the
others." She gathered courage and went on: "Look here, Hugh, why not
give it up; start on a really good one that'll help your name; and
we'll live meanwhile on all that from my allowance in the bank?" She
rose and took him by the arm persuasively.

"My dear child," he said with condescension, "you seem to think it's
all just money. Tear the whole book up? Don't worry your little head
with such things, but just go and see if Lily can't give us some early
lunch and then we'll go to Kew for tea!"

Helena, released with a kiss, went out feeling oddly rebellious in
spite of the Kew treat; and as for him, he was annoyed. Give it up,
indeed! She talked as though "all this" (for she had called it that)
were something criminal, instead of merely a book that was bound to
sell! He certainly had no idea of sacrificing all his work for her
absurd dislikes....

Even the best artists do not so much object to popularity, when they
reach thirty-eight.

Hubert Brett, indeed, was more excited over this novel's birth than
over that of any other. Almost every day he had to go up to see agent,
publisher, or editor. He told Helena, as his excuse for leaving her so
much, that it was most important this book, as a "popular" one, should
be widely advertised and publishers were such eternal fools about that
sort of thing. They always spent all their money upon other people's
trash and then said they could not afford to help on your own books!

As the day for publishing drew nearer, this theory bulked almost into
an obsession. Helena came to dread the paper boy's arrival. Hubert
would tear the dailies open, dash by instinct to the literary page, and
then give a discordant laugh of scorn or anger.

"Of course not," he would say. "They won't tell any one till it's been
out a week! They mean to keep it dark, trust them!"

"I dare say they're saving up for later on, dear," was her soothing
reply. It was not always she, by now, who was the child.

But he would not be soothed.

Helena was glad when the day arri