trike me as being
quaintly original--rather more original than your Piccadyllic heroine."

Knowles was not bad-tempered, but he was a frequent cause of bad temper
in other people. It was with the utmost difficulty that Wyndham
controlled himself for a final effort to evade the personal, and set the
question at large on general grounds.

"Then I suppose you would deny the right of any artist to make use of
living material?"

Knowles yawned. "I don't attempt to deny anything. I'm debating another
question."

"What is that?" Wyndham smiled an uneasy muscular smile.

"Whether it isn't my duty to kick you, or rather to _try_ to kick you,
out of this room."

"Really; and what for? For the crime of writing a successful story?"

"For the perpetration of the most consummate piece of literary
scoundrelism on record."

As that statement was accompanied by a nervous twitching of the lips
which Wyndham was at liberty to take for a smile, he held out his hand
to Knowles before saying good-night.

"My dear Knowles, if _your_ notions of literary honour held good, there
would be an end of realism."

"The end of realism, my dear Wyndham, is the thing of all others I most
desire to see."

They had shaken hands; but Wyndham understood his friend, and he knew
as certainly as if Knowles had told him so that Audrey Craven, the woman
whom neither of them loved, had avenged herself. She had struck, through
Laura, at the friendship of his life. He was also informed of one or two
facts about himself which had not as yet come within the range of his
observation. He consoled himself with the reflection that the
temptations of genius are not those of other men. And perhaps he was
right.

Knowles sat down to his review of Miss Armstrong's book with unruffled
urbanity. He wrote: "This authoress belongs to a select but rapidly
increasing band of thinkers. There may be schisms in the new school with
regard to details, but on the whole it is a united one. The members are
unanimous in their fearless optimism. One and all they preach the same
hopeful doctrine, that the attainment of a high standard of immodesty by
woman will in time make morality possible for man."

He went to bed vowing that of all professions that chosen by the man of
letters is the most detestable.

CHAPTER XXII

That winter was a hard one for the Havilands; they were at the very
lowest ebb of their resources, short of being actually in debt. The
reclaiming