when
she is a woman I--I am sorry she is not poor."

But if Philip did not pour out his heart to his old friend, he did open
a lively and frequent correspondence with Alice. Not about the person
who was always in his thoughts--oh, no--but about himself, and all he
was doing, in the not unreasonable expectation that the news would go
where he could not send it directly--so many ingenious ways has love of
attaining its object. And if Alice, no doubt, understood all this, she
was nevertheless delighted, and took great pleasure in chronicling the
news of the village and giving all the details that came in her way
about the millionaire family. This connection with the world, if only by
correspondence, was an outlet to her reserved and secluded life. And
her letters recorded more of her character, of her feeling, than he had
known in all his boyhood. When Alice mentioned, as it were by chance,
that Evelyn had asked, more than once, when she had spoken of receiving
letters, if her cousin was going on with his story, Philip felt that the
connection was not broken.

Going on with his story he was, and with good heart. The thought that
"she" might some day read it was inspiration enough. Any real creation,
by pen or brush or chisel, must express the artist and be made in
independence of the demands of a vague public. Art is vitiated when
the commercial demand, which may be a needed stimulus, presides at the
creation. But it is doubtful if any artist in letters, or in form
or color, ever did anything well without having in mind some special
person, whose approval was desired or whose criticism was feared. Such
is the universal need of human sympathy. It is, at any rate, true that
Philip's story, recast and reinspired, was thenceforth written under the
spell of the pure divining eyes of Evelyn Mavick. Unconsciously this was
so. For at this time Philip had not come to know that the reason why so
many degraded and degrading stories and sketches are written is because
the writers' standard is the approval of one or two or a group of
persons of vitiated tastes and low ideals.

The Mavicks did not return to town till late in the autumn. By this time
Philip's novel had been submitted to a publisher, or, rather, to state
the exact truth, it had begun to go the rounds of the publishers. Mr.
Brad, to whose nineteenth-century and newspaper eye Philip had shrunk
from confiding his modest creation, but who was consulted in the
business, co