the book again,' said
Mark gloomily. 'I--I beg your pardon! It sounds ungrateful. And
yet--if you knew--if you only knew!' He was in one of his despondent
moods just then, when his skeleton came out of the cupboard and
gibbered at him. What right had he, with this fraud on his soul, to be
admitted even to the ordinary friendship of a sweet and noble girl?
What would she say to him if she knew? And for a moment he felt a mad
impulse to tell her.

'I wish you would tell me,' she said gently, as if answering the
impulse. But the suggestion, put into words, sobered him. She would
despise him; she must. He could not bear to see his shame reflected in
her eyes. So he told her half-truths only.

'It is only that I am so tired of being tied to a book,' he said
passionately. 'Tied? I _am_ a book. Everyone I meet sees in me, not a
man to be judged and liked for himself, but something to criticise and
flatter and compare with the nature he revealed in print.'

Half truth as this was, it was more sincere than such confidences are
apt to be.

'Your book is you, or a part of you,' said Mabel. 'It seems so absurd
that you should be jealous of it.'

'I am,' he said. 'Not so much with others, but when I am with you it
tortures me. When you show me any kindness I think, "She would not say
that, she would not do this, if I were not the author of 'Illusion.'
She honours the book, not you--only the book!"'

'How unjust!' said Mabel. She could not think it a perverted form of
diseased vanity. He plainly undervalued his work himself, and its
popularity was a real vexation to him. She could only be sorry for
him.

'But I see proof of it in others every now and then,' continued Mark,
'people who do not connect me at first with "Cyril Ernstone." Only the
other day some of them went so far as to apologise for having snubbed
me "before they knew who I was." I don't complain of that, of
course--I'm not such an idiot; but it does make me doubtful of the
other extreme. And I cannot bear the doubt in your case!'

His eyes were raised pleadingly to hers. He seemed longing, and yet
dreading, to speak more plainly. Mabel's heart beat quicker; there was
a subtle, delicious flattery in such self-abasement before her of a
man she admired so much. Would he say more then, or would he wait? As
far as she knew her own mind, she hoped he would wait a little longer.
She said nothing, being perhaps afraid of saying too much. 'Yet I know
it will be so,'