est, poor fellow. But
oh! the bridges he speaks of--they're so crude, so crude! I can see
every one. The murder--you remember?"

It occurred in the first part of the novel. I had read it. Three or four
splashes of blood on the page instead of ink and the thing was done.
Admirable. The instinctive high light of the artist.

"I thought it one of the best things in the book," said I.

"Oh!" she waved a gesture of disgust. "How can you say so? It's
horrible. It isn't Adrian. I can see the point where he left it to the
imagination. Jaffery, with no imagination, has come in and spoiled it.
And then the scene on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco, where Fenton
finds Ellina Ray, the broken-down star of London musical comedy. Adrian
never wrote it. It's the sort of claptrap he hated. He has often told me
so. Jaffery thought it was necessary to explain Ellina in the next
chapter, and so in his dull way, he stuck it in."

That scene also had I read. It was a little flaming cameo of a low dive
on the Barbary Coast, and a presentation of the thing seen, somewhat
journalistic, I admit--but such as very few journalists could give.

"That's pure Adrian," said I brazenly.

"It isn't. There are disgusting little details that only a man that had
been there could have mentioned. Oh! do you suppose I don't know the
difference between Adrian's work and that of a penny-a-liner like
Jaffery?"

The door opened and Jaffery appeared. Doria went up to him and took him
by the lapels of his dress coat.

"I've read it. It's a work of genius. But, oh! Jaffery, I do want it to
be without a flaw. Don't hate me, dear--I know you've done all that
mortal man could do for Adrian and for me. But it isn't your fault if
you're not a professional novelist or an imaginative writer. And you,
yourself, said the bridges were clumsy. Couldn't you--oh!--I loathe
hurting you, dear Jaffery--but it's all the world, all eternity to
me--couldn't you get one of Adrian's colleagues--one of the famous
people"--she rattled off a few names--"to look through the proofs and
revise them--just in honour of Adrian's memory? Couldn't you, dear
Jaffery?" She tugged convulsively at the poor old giant's coat. "You're
one of the best and noblest men who ever lived or I couldn't say this to
you. But you understand, don't you?"

Jaffery's ruddy face turned as white as chalk. She might have slapped it
physically and it would have worn the same dazed, paralysed lack of
expression