“And how much money do you want for this modest scheme of yours?”

“I hadn’t thought,” said Evelyn, patting her father’s hand.  And then, at a venture, “I guess about ten millions.”

“Whew!  Have you any idea how much ten millions are, or how much one million is?”

“Why, ten millions, if you have a hundred, is no more than one million if you have only ten.  Doesn’t it depend?”

“If it depends upon you, child, I don’t think money has any value for you whatever.  You are a born financier for getting rid of a surplus.  You ought to be Secretary of the Treasury.”

Mavick rose, lifted up his daughter, and, kissing her with more than usual tenderness, said, “You’ll learn about the world in time,” and bade her goodnight.

XVI

Law and love go very well together as occupations, but, when literature is added, the trio is not harmonious.  Either of the two might pull together, but the combination of the three is certainly disastrous.

It would be difficult to conceive of a person more obviously up in the air than Philip at this moment.  He went through his office duties intelligently and perfunctorily, but his heart was not in the work, and reason as he would his career did not seem to be that way.  He was lured too strongly by that siren, the ever-alluring woman who sits upon the rocks and sings so deliciously to youth of the sweets of authorship.  He who listens once to that song hears it always in his ears, through disappointment and success—­and the success is often the greatest disappointment—­through poverty and hope deferred and heart-sickness for recognition, through the hot time of youth and the creeping incapacity of old age.  The song never ceases.  Were the longing and the hunger it arouses ever satisfied with anything, money for instance, any more than with fame?

And if the law had a feeble hold on him, how much more uncertain was his grasp on literature.  He had thrown his line, he had been encouraged by nibbles, but publishers were too wary to take hold.  It seemed to him that he had literally cast his bread upon the waters, and apparently at an ebb tide, and his venture had gone to the fathomless sea.  He had put his heart into the story, and, more than that, his hope of something dearer than any public favor.  As he went over the story in his mind, scene after scene, and dwelt upon the theme that held the whole in unity, he felt that Evelyn would be touched by the recognition of her part in the inspiration, and that the great public must give some heed to it.  Perhaps not the great public—­for its liking now ran in quite another direction, but a considerable number of people like Celia, who were struggling with problems of life, and the Alices in country homes who still preserved in their souls a belief in the power of a noble life, and perhaps some critics who had not rid themselves of the old traditions.  If the publishers would only give him a chance!