lined to resent it, even
while excusing it to herself as the unintentional _gaucherie_ of an
over-modest man.

'I ought to have remembered perhaps,' she said, with a touch of pique
in her voice, 'that you must long ago have tired of hearing such
things.'

He had indeed, but he saw that his brusqueness had annoyed her, and
hastened to explain. 'You must not think that is so,' he said, very
earnestly; 'only, there is praise one cannot trust oneself to listen
to long----'

'And it really makes you uncomfortable to be talked to about
"Illusion"?' said Mabel.

'I will be quite frank, Miss Langton,' said Mark (and he really felt
that he must for his own peace of mind convince her of this);
'_really_ it does. Because, you see, I feel all the time--I hope, that
is--that I can do much better work in the future.'

'And we have all been admiring in the wrong place? I see,' said Mabel,
with apparent innocence, but a rather dangerous gleam in her eyes.

'Oh, I know it sounds conceited,' said Mark, 'but the real truth is,
that when I hear such kind things said about a work which--which gave
me so very little trouble to produce, it makes me a little
uncomfortable sometimes, because (you know how perversely things
happen sometimes), because I can't help a sort of fear that my next
book, to which I really am giving serious labour, may be utterly
unnoticed, or--or worse!'

There was no possibility of mistaking this for mock-modesty, and
though Mabel thought such sensitiveness rather overstrained, she liked
him for it notwithstanding.

'I think you need not fear that,' she said; 'but you shall not be made
uncomfortable any more. And you are writing another book? May I ask
you about that, or is that another indiscretion?'

Mark was only too delighted to be able to talk about a book which he
really _had_ written; it was at least a change; and he plunged into
the subject with much zest. 'It deals with things and men,' he
concluded, 'on rather a larger scale than "Illusion" has done. I have
tried to keep it clear of all commonplace characters.'

'But then it will not be quite so lifelike, will it?' suggested Mabel;
'and in "Illusion" you made even commonplace characters interesting.'

'That is very well,' he said, a little impatiently, 'for a book which
does not aim at the first rank. It is easy enough to register exactly
what happens around one. Anybody who keeps a diary can do that. The
highest fiction should idealise.'

'I