alf told,
maliciously hinted sometimes--but usually the germ of truth is to be
found in what they say, however they may choose to say it."

Valerie leaned back against the door, hands clasped behind her, eyebrows
bent slightly inward in an unwilling effort to remember.

Finally she said impatiently: "They don't know what they're talking
about. They all say, substantially, the same thing--"

"What is that thing?"

"Why--oh, it's too silly to repeat--but they say there is nothing
lovable about your work--that it's inhumanly and coldly
perfect--too--too--" she flushed and laughed uncertainly--"'too damn
omniscient' is what one celebrated man said. And I could have boxed his
large, thin, celebrated ears for him!"

"Go on," he nodded; "what else do they say?"

"Nothing. That's all they can find to say--all they dare say. You know
what they are--what other men are--and some of the younger girls, too.
Not that I don't like them--and they are very sweet to me--only they're
not like you--"

"They're more human. Is that it, Valerie?"

"No, I don't mean that!"

"Yes, you do. You mean that the others take life in a perfectly human
manner--find enjoyment, amusement in each other, in a hundred things
outside of their work. They act like men and women, not like a painting
machine; if they experience impulses and emotions they don't entirely
stifle 'em. They have time and leisure to foregather, laugh, be silly,
discuss, banter, flirt, make love, and cut up all the various harmless
capers that humanity is heir to. _That's_ what you mean, but you don't
realise it. And you think, and they think, that my solemn and owlish
self-suppression is drying me up, squeezing out of me the essence of
that warm, lovable humanity in which, they say, my work is deficient.
They say, too, that my inspiration is lacking in that it is not founded
on personal experience; that I have never known any deep emotion, any
suffering, any of the sterner, darker regrets--anything of that passion
which I sometimes depict. They say that the personal and convincing
element is totally absent because I have not lived"--he laughed--"and
loved; that my work lacks the one thing which only the self-knowledge of
great happiness and great pain can lend to it.... And--I think they are
right, Valerie. What do you think?"

The girl stood silent, with lowered eyes, reflecting for a moment. Then
she looked up curiously.

"_Have_ you never been very unhappy?"

"I had