The publisher turned his chair round towards the fire. He was a man of barely middle age, although his black hair was besprinkled with grey and growing a little thin at the temples. His features were good, but his face was a little thin, and his clothes were scarcely as tidy, or the appointments of his office so comfortable as his name and position in the publishing world might have warranted. Marcia, who had been looking at him while he read, leaned forward and brushed the cigarette ash from his coat sleeve.
"Such an untidy man!" she declared, straightening his tie. "I am not at all sure that you deserve to have lady clients calling upon you. Were you late last night?"
"That means about one or two, I suppose," she went on reprovingly.
"I dined at the club and stayed on," he told her. "There was nothing else to do except work, and I was a little tired of that."
"Any fresh stuff in--interesting stuff, I mean?"
"Three more Russian novels," he replied, "all in French and want translating, of course. The only one I have read is terribly grim and sordid. I dare say it would sell. I am going to read the other two before I decide anything. Then perhaps you'll help me."
"Of course I will," she promised. "I do wish, though, James, you wouldn't stay at the club so late. How many whiskies and sodas?"
"I know what that means! James, why aren't you a little more human? You get heaps of invitations to nice houses. Much better go out and make some women friends. You ought to marry, you know."
"I am quite ready to when you will marry me," he retorted.
"But, my dear man, I am bespoke," she reminded him. "You know that quite well. I couldn't possibly think of marrying anybody."
"What are you going to do with that money?" he demanded.
"I think I shall keep it," she decided. "Not to do so would hurt him terribly."
"And keeping it hurts me damnably!" he muttered.
"We've had this over so often, haven't we? I cannot leave Reginald as long as he wants me, relies upon me as much as he does now."
"Why not?" was the almost rough demand. "He has had the best of your life."
"And he has given me a great deal of his," she retorted. "For nineteen years I have been his very dear friend. During all that time he has never broken a promise to me, never told a falsehood, never said a single word which could grate or hurt. If he has sometimes seemed a little aloof, it is because he really believes himself to be a great person. He believes in himself immensely, you know, James--in the privileges and sanctity of his descent. It seems so strange in this world, where we others see other things. If I only dared, I would write a novel about it."