Mabel--I thought I could always
come to my wife for encouragement and appreciation; it seems I was
mistaken!'

Mabel bit her lip, and her eyes were dazzled for a moment: 'You asked
me what I thought,' she said in a low voice; 'do you think it was
pleasant to tell you? When you ask me again, I shall know better how
you expect to be answered!'

He felt all at once what he had done, and hastened to show his
penitence; she forgave, and did not let him see how deeply she had
been wounded--only from that day some of the poetry of her life had
turned to prose. Of 'Sweet Bells Jangled' she never spoke again, and
he did not know whether she ever read it to the end or not.

They had finished breakfast one Saturday morning, and Mark was
leisurely cutting the weekly reviews, when he suddenly sheltered
himself behind the paper he had been skimming--'Sweet Bells' was
honoured with a long notice. His head swam as he took in the effect
with some effort. The critic was not one of those fallen angels of
literature who rejoice over an unexpected recruit; he wrote with a
kindly recollection of 'Illusion,' and his condemnation was sincerely
reluctant; still, it was unmixed condemnation, and ended with an
exhortation to the author to return to the 'higher and more artistic
aims' of his first work. Mark's hand shook till the paper rustled when
he came to that; he was so long silent that Mabel looked up from
reading her letters, and asked if the new book was reviewed yet.

'Reviewed yet!' said Mark from behind the article; 'why, it hasn't
been out a fortnight.'

'I know,' said Mabel, 'but I thought perhaps that, after
"Illusion"----'

'Every book has to wait its turn!' said Mark, as he saved himself with
all the reviews, and locked himself in the little study where he
sketched out the stories to which he had not as yet found appropriate
endings.

There was another notice amongst the reviews, but in that the critic
was relentless in pointing out that the whilom idol had feet of
clay--and enormous ones; after a very severe elaboration of the
faults, the critic concluded: 'It almost seems as though the author,
weary of the laudation which accompanied the considerable (if, in some
degree, accidental) success of his first book, had taken this very
effectual method of rebuking the enthusiasm. However this may be, one
more such grotesque and ill-considered production as that under
review, and we can promise him an instant cessation of all t