e would make it up like Minnie. She would be the best
concession they could make to human weakness; she would strike at least
this note of showing that it was not going to be quite all--well, all
_you_. Now Ray draws the line at Minnie; he won't stoop to Minnie;
he declines to touch, to look at Minnie. When Mr. Bousefield--rather
imperiously, I believe--made Minnie a _sine qua non_ of his retention
of his post he said something rather violent, told him to go to some
unmentionable place and take Minnie with him. That of course put the fat
on the fire. They had really a considerable scene."

"So had he with the _Beacon_ man," I musingly replied. "Poor dear, he
seems born for considerable scenes! It's on Minnie, then, that they've
really split?" Mrs. Highmore exhaled her despair in a sound which I
took for an assent, and when we had rolled a little further I rather
in-consequently and to her visible surprise broke out of my reverie. "It
will never do in the world--he _must_ stoop to Minnie!"

"It's too late--and what I've told you still isn't all. Mr. Bousefield
raises another objection."

"What other, pray?"

"Can't you guess?"

I wondered. "No more of Ray's fiction?"

"Not a line. That's something else no magazine can stand. Now that his
novel has run its course Mr. Bousefield is distinctly disappointed."

I fairly bounded in my place. "Then it may do?"

Mrs. Highmore looked bewildered. "Why so, if he finds it too dull?"

"Dull? Ralph Limbert? He's as fine as a needle!"

"It comes to the same thing--he won't penetrate leather. Mr. Bousefield
had counted on something that _would_, on something that would have a
wider acceptance. Ray says he wants iron pegs." I collapsed again; my
flicker of elation dropped to a throb of quieter comfort; and after a
moment's silence I asked my neighbour if she had herself read the work
our friend had just put forth. "No," she replied, "I gave him my word at
the beginning, on his urgent request, that I wouldn't."

"Not even as a book?"

"He begged me never to look at it at all. He said he was trying a low
experiment. Of course I knew what he meant and I entreated him to let me
just for curiosity take a peep. But he was firm, he declared he couldn't
bear the thought that a woman like me should see him in the depths."

"He's only, thank God, in the depths of distress," I replied. "His
experiment's nothing worse than a failure."

"Then Bousefield _is_ right--his circulation won