"You meant it."
"If ever I have to interview you, I shall say that under a mask of
apparent incoherency and irrelevance, Miss Hilary conceals a profound
knowledge of human nature and a gift of divination which explores the
most unconscious opinions and motives of her interlocutor. How would you
like that?"
"Pretty well, because I think it's true. But I shouldn't like to be
interviewed."
"Well, you're safe from me. My interviewing days are over. I believe if
I keep on getting better at the rate I've been going the last week, I
shall be able to write a play this summer, besides doing my work for the
_Abstract_. If I could do that, and it succeeded, the riddle would be
read for me."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I should have a handsome income, and could give up
newspaper work altogether."
"Could you? How glorious!" said Louise, with the sort of maternal
sympathy she permitted herself to feel for the sick youth. "How much
would you get for your play?"
"If it was only reasonably successful, it would be worth five or six
thousand dollars a year."
"And is that a handsome income?" she asked, with mounting earnestness.
He pulled himself up in the hammock to get her face fully in view, and
asked, "How much do you think I've been able to average up to this
time?"
"I don't know. I'm afraid I don't know at all about such things. But I
should _like_ to."
Maxwell let himself drop back into the hammock. "I think I won't
humiliate myself by giving the figures. I'd better leave it to your
imagination. You'll be sure to make it enough."
"Why should you be ashamed of it, if it's ever so little?" she asked.
"But _I_ know. It's your pride. It's like Sue Northwick wanting to give
up all her property because her father wrote that letter, and said he
had used the company's money. And Matt says it isn't his property at
all, and the company has no right to it. If she gives it up, she and her
sister will have nothing to live on. And they _won't_ let themselves be
helped--any more than--than--_you_ will!"
"No. We began with that; people who need help can't let you help them.
Don't they know where their father is?"
"No. But of course they must, now, before long."
Maxwell said, after the silence that followed upon this. "I should like
to have a peep into that man's soul."
"Horrors! Why should you?" asked Louise.
"It would be such splendid material. If he is fond of his children--"
"He and Sue dote upon each other. I don't see how she can endure him; he
always made me feel creepy."
"Then he must have written that letter to conciliate public feeling, and
to make his children easier about him and his future. And now if you
could see him when he realizes that he's only brought more shame on
them, and forced them to beggar themselves--it would be a tremendous
situation."
"But I shouldn't _like_ to see him at such a time. It seems to me,
that's worse than interviewing, Mr. Maxwell."
There was a sort of recoil from him in her tone, which perhaps he felt.
It seemed to interest, rather than offend him. "You don't get the
artistic point of view."
"I don't want to get it, if that's it. And if your play is going to be
about any such thing as that--"
"It isn't," said Maxwell. "I failed on that. I shall try a comic
motive."
"Oh!" said Louise, in the concessive tone people use, when they do not
know but they have wronged some one. She spiritually came back to him,
but materially she rose to go away and leave him. She stooped for the
letter he had dropped out of the hammock and gave it him. "Don't you
want this?"
"Oh, thank you! I'd forgotten it." He glanced at the superscription,
"It's from Pinney. You ought to know Pinney, Miss Hilary, if you want
the _true_ artistic point of view."
"Is he a literary man?"
"Pinney? Did you read the account of the defalcation in the
_Events_--when it first came out? All illustrations?"
"_That?_ I don't wonder you didn't care to read his letter! Or perhaps
he's your friend--"
"Pinney's everybody's friend," said Maxwell, with an odd sort of relish.
"He's delightful. I should like to do Pinney. He's a type." Louise stood
frowning at the mere notion of Pinney. "He's not a bad fellow, Miss
Hilary, though he _is_ a remorseless interviewer. He would be very good
material. He is a mixture of motives, like everybody else, but he has
only one ambition: he wants to be the greatest newspaper man of his
generation. The ladies nearly always like him. He never lets five
minutes pass without speaking of his wife; he's so proud of her he can't
keep still."
"I should think she would detest him."
"She doesn't. She's quite as proud of him as he is of her. It's
affecting to witness their devotion--or it would be if it were not such
a bore."
"I can't understand you," said Louise, leaving him to his letter.