eyes; a brutal blow provoked by
her incaution; and she reeled.

"Can't afford it, Hugh?" she repeated, with a vague sense of being
accused. "Why, do I cost so much? Do I cost more than Ruth?"

He had not looked for anything quite as direct as that. He had blurted
it out and now, as often, felt ashamed. He laughed and said in a much
kinder tone:

"Don't you worry your dear head about things like that. We shall be
all right. You won't find the man in possession by our fireside yet,
when you come home from market!"

Now it was her turn not to be amused. "No, but tell me," she said.
"I'd much rather know. Are we honestly hard up?"

"What a practical little thing it's getting," he said, patting her on
the back as they strode onward, always heralded by the long white dog
with its straight tail, as proud as a drum-major. "Well, if you really
want to know," he went on, "we are and have been, but we shan't be.
Listen!" He turned about and about, his finger to his mouth, upon the
empty spaces, clearly once more in the best of spirits. "Never tell a
soul--and least of all the High-Art Alison--but I am doing a
pot-boiler!"

"What, something worse than you need?" she blurted out in her
astonishment.

He laughed at that. "Yes, if you put it so! Anyhow, something to make
money."

"But won't the critics hate that?" she asked seriously.

Hubert Brett, for a man who had been almost too kindly reviewed, was
always very hard on critics.

"Now listen," he said, "and I'll tell you something. The public has a
natural suspicion of literary criticism. It only reads the stuff to
see what to avoid. If it sees some book is called sincere,
painstaking, artistic, a masterpiece, or anything like that, it passes
on until it comes to something labelled crude and elementary. Then it
gets out its library list. Think of the two best-selling novelists
to-day, and then think what the critics say of them! They are a
journalistic joke. Yes, the more the dear critics hurl abuse, the more
the darling public rushes out to Boot's. I'm sick of good reviews and
rotten sales. I'm not doing it because I married you, not I; but I
want columns of abuse and half a million copies!"

She loathed it, always, when he talked like this. She never knew quite
what he meant. She hoped he was not really writing a pot-boiler.

"No, but honestly," she said, "why are things worse than in the old
days? Your books sell just as well. Do tell me