"I was thinking," he said, "what would be the result of your reading such stories of mine as have been published--there have been a few, you know, in the magazines--if you were to test them by the standard of 'Love in a Cloud.' I'm afraid they might not stand it."
She smiled reassuringly, but perhaps with a faint suggestion of condescension.
"One doesn't expect all stories to be as good as the best," she observed.
Fairfield turned his face away for a quick flash of a grin to the universe in general; then with perfect gravity he looked again at his companion.
"I am afraid," he said, "that even the author of 'Love in a Cloud' wouldn't expect so much of you as that you should call his story the best."
"I do call it the best," she returned, a little defiantly. "Don't you?"
"No," he said slowly, "I couldn't go so far as that."
"But you spoke yesterday as if you admired it."
"But that isn't the same thing as saying that there is nothing better."
Miss Calthorpe began to tap her small foot impatiently.
"That is always the way with men who write," she declared. "They always have all sorts of fault to find with everything."
"Have you known a great many literary men?" he asked.
There are few things more offensive in conversation, especially in conversation with a lady, than an insistence upon logic. To ask of a woman that she shall make only exact statements is as bad as to require her to be always consistent, and there is small reason for wonder if at this inquiry Miss Calthorpe should show signs of offense.
"I do not see what that has to do with the matter," she returned stiffly. "Of course everybody knows about literary men."
The sun of the April afternoon smiled over the landscape, and the young man smiled under his mustache, which was too large to be entirely becoming. He glanced up at his companion, who did not smile in return, but only sat there looking extremely pretty, with her flushed cheeks, her dark hair in pretty willful tendrils about her temples, and her dark eyes alight.
"Perhaps you have some personal feeling about the book," he said. "You know that it is claimed that a woman's opinion of literature is always half personal feeling."
She flushed more deeply yet, and drew herself up as if he were intruding upon unwarrantable matters.