k that people of any
culture should, for their own sakes, at least assume to have read and
appreciated.

Mark was hailed by many judges of such things as a new and powerful
thinker, who had chosen to veil his theories under the garb of
romance, and if the theory was dissented from in some quarters, the
power and charm of the book were universally admitted. At dinner
parties, and in all circles where literature is discussed at all,
'Illusion' was becoming a standard topic; friendships were cemented
and intimacies dissolved over it; it became a kind of 'shibboleth.'

At first Mark had little opportunity of realising this to the full
extent, for he went out seldom if at all. There had been a time in his
life--before he had left Cambridge, that is--when he had mixed more in
society; his undergraduate friends had been proud to present to their
family circle a man with his reputation for general brilliancy, and so
his engagements in the vacations had been frequent. But this did not
last; from a feeling that his own domestic surroundings would scarcely
bear out a vaguely magnificent way he had of alluding to his 'place'
and his 'people'--a way which was not so much deliberate imposition as
a habit caught from associates richer and higher up in the social
scale--from this feeling, he never offered to return any of these
hospitalities, and though this was not rigorously expected of him, it
did serve to prevent any one of his numerous acquaintanceships from
ripening into something more. When the crash came, and it was
generally discovered that the reputed brilliant man of his year was a
very ordinary failure, Mark found himself speedily forgotten, and in
the first soreness of disappointment was not sorry to remain in
obscurity for a season.

But now a reaction in his favour was setting in; his publishers were
already talking of a second edition of 'Illusion,' and he received,
under his name of 'Cyril Ernstone,' countless letters of
congratulation and kindly criticism, all so pleasantly and cordially
worded, that each successive note made him angrier, the only one that
consoled him at all being a communication in a female hand which
abused the book and its writer in the most unmeasured terms. For his
correspondent's estimate of the work was the one which he had a secret
wish to see more prevalent (so long, of course, as it did not
interfere with the success of his scheme), and he could almost have
written to thank her--had she