on in silence, his heart began to beat and he rocked himself
nervously, while his eyes kept wandering from the columns to the
pretty hands supporting the volume which hid Mabel's face. Hands
reveal many things, and Mabel's could be expressive enough at
times--but they told him nothing then; he watched them turn a leaf
from time to time, they always did so deliberately, almost
caressingly, he thought, but with no eagerness--although the opening
was full of incident. He calculated that she must be at a place where
there was a brilliant piece of humorous description; she had a fair
share of humour--why didn't she laugh?

'Have you got to that first appearance of the Curate on the
tennis-ground?' he asked at last.

She laid down the volume for an instant, and he saw her eyes--they
were calm and critical. 'Past that! I am beginning Chapter Three,' she
said.

The second chapter had contained some of his most sparkling and
rollicking writing--and it had not even moved her to smile! He
consoled himself with the reflection that the robuster humour never
does appeal to women. He had begun his third chapter with a ludicrous
anecdote which, though it bordered on the profane, he had considered
too good to be lost, but now he had misgivings.

'I'm afraid,' he ventured dubiously, 'you won't quite like that bit
about the bishop, darling?'

'I'm afraid I don't quite,' she replied from behind the book. The
story had no real harm in it, even in Mabel's eyes; the only pity was
that in any part of 'Illusion' it would have been an obvious
blot--and that it did not seem out of keeping in the pages she was
reading now.

She had sat down to read with such high hopes, so sure an anticipation
of real enjoyment, that it was hard to find that the spell was broken;
she tried to believe that she read on because she was interested--her
real reason was a dread of some pause, when she would be asked to give
her opinion. What should she say?

Perhaps it should be explained at once that the book was not a foolish
one; Mark, whatever else he was, could scarcely be called a fool, and
had a certain share of the literary faculty; it was full of smart and
florid passages that had evidently been industriously polished, and
had something of the perishable brilliancy of varnish. There is a kind
of vulgarity of mind so subtle as to resist every test but ink, and
the cheap and flashy element in Mark's nature had formed a deposit,
slight, perhaps, but perc