he pace. Saves a lot of trouble. Now if
you could only have got the 'Radiator' to denounce you--"

"That's what the Bishop said!" cried Mrs. Fetherel.

"He did?"

"He said his only chance of selling 'Through a Glass Brightly' was to
have it denounced on the ground of immorality."

"H'm," said Mrs. Clinch. "I thought he knew a trick or two." She turned
an illuminated eye on her cousin. "You ought to get _him_ to denounce
'Fast and Loose'!" she cried.

Mrs. Fetherel looked at her suspiciously. "I suppose every book must
stand or fall on its own merits," she said in an unconvinced tone.

"Bosh! That view is as extinct as the post-chaise and the
packet-ship--it belongs to the time when people read books. Nobody does
that now; the reviewer was the first to set the example, and the public
were only too thankful to follow it. At first they read the reviews;
now they read only the publishers' extracts from them. Even these are
rapidly being replaced by paragraphs borrowed from the vocabulary of
commerce. I often have to look twice before I am sure if I am reading a
department-store advertisement or the announcement of a new batch of
literature. The publishers will soon be having their 'fall and spring
openings' and their 'special importations for Horse-Show Week.' But the
Bishop is right, of course--nothing helps a book like a rousing attack
on its morals; and as the publishers can't exactly proclaim the
impropriety of their own wares, the task has to be left to the press or
the pulpit."

"The pulpit--?" Mrs. Fetherel mused.

"Why, yes--look at those two novels in England last year--"

Mrs. Fetherel shook her head hopelessly. "There is so much more
interest in literature in England than here."

"Well, we've got to make the supply create the demand. The Bishop could
run your novel up into the hundred thousands in no time."

"But if he can't make his own sell--?"

"My dear, a man can't very well preach against his own writings!"

Mrs. Clinch rose and picked up her proofs.

"I'm awfully sorry for you, Paula dear," she concluded, "but I can't
help being thankful that there's no demand for pessimism in the field
of natural history. Fancy having to write 'The Fall of a Sparrow,' or
'How the Plants Misbehave!'"

IV

Mrs. Fetherel, driving up to the Grand Central Station one morning
about five months later, caught sight of the distinguished novelist,
Archer Hynes, hurrying into the waiting-room ahead of her. Hynes