thought you smart if they fancied you could dash
things off without an effort. You understand now why I am a literary
man instead of a sculptor."

"Perfectly," Beth said drily. "It was in those days, I suppose, that
you were bitten by French literature, and began to idealise mean
intrigues, and to delight in foul matter if the manner of its
presentation were an admirable specimen of style."

"Ah," he said solemnly, "style is everything."

"It is all work of word-turning and little play of fancy with those
who make style everything," said Beth, glad to get away from love,
"and that makes your Jack-of-style a dull boy and morbid in spite of
his polish. Less style and more humour would be the saving of some of
you, the making of others."

"Flaubert wrote 'Madame Bovary' six times," he assured her
impressively.

"I wonder how much it lost each time," said Beth. "But you know what
Flaubert himself said about style before he had done--just what I am
saying!"

"I cannot understand your being insensible to the charms of style," he
said, evading the thrust.

"I am not. I only say it is not of the most vital importance.
Thackeray was a Titan--well, look at his slipshod style in places, his
careless grammar, his constant tautology. He knew better, and he could
have done better, and it would have been well if he had, I don't deny
it; but his work would not have been a scrap more vital, nor he
himself the greater. I have seen numbers of people here in town
studying art. They go to the schools to learn to draw, not because
they have ideas to express, apparently, but in the hope that ideas
will come when they know how to express them. And I think it is the
same in literature. One school talks of style as if it were the end
and not the means. They form a style, but have nothing to express that
is worth expressing. It would be better to pray the gods to send them
the matter; if the matter is there in the mind it will out, and the
manner will form itself in the effort to produce it--so said the
great."

There was a pause, during which Alfred Cayley Pounce sighed heavily
and Beth looked at the clock.

"You were stimulating as a child, Beth," he said at last, "and you are
stimulating still. Think what it would be to me to have you always by
my side! I cannot--I cannot let you go again now that I have found
you! We were boy and girl together."

"That does not alter anything in our present position," Beth answered;
"nor does