“Does failure constitute greatness?” she asked, with a faintly satirical inflection in her sweet voice which he had never heard before.

“Sometimes—­in fact pretty often,” he replied, dabbing his brush busily on his canvas—­“You should read about great authors—­”

“I have read about them,” she said—­“Walter Scott was popular and made money,—­Charles Dickens was popular and made money—­Thackeray was popular and made money—­Shakespeare himself seemed to have had the one principal aim of making sufficient money enough to live comfortably in his native town, and he was ‘popular’ in his day—­ indeed he ‘played to the gallery.’  But he was not a ’failure’—­and the whole world acknowledges his greatness now, though in his life-time he was unconscious of it.”

Surprised at her quick eloquence, he paused in his work.

“Very well spoken!” he remarked, condescendingly—­“I see you take a high view of your art!  But like all women, you wander from the point.  We were talking of Lord Blythe—­and I say it would be far better for you to be—­well!—­his heiress!—­for he might leave you all his fortune—­than go on writing books.”

Her lips quivered:  despite her efforts, tears started to her eyes.  He saw, and throwing down his brush came and knelt beside her, passing his arm round her waist.

“What have I said?” he murmured, coaxingly—­“Innocent—­sweet little love!  Forgive me if I have—­what?”—­and he laughed softly—­ “rubbed you up the wrong way!”

She forced a smile, and her delicate white hands wandered caressingly through his hair as he laid his head against her bosom.

“I am sorry!” she said, at last—­“I thought—­I hoped—­you might be proud of my work, Amadis!  I was planning it all for that!  You see”—­she hesitated—­“I learned so much from the Sieur Amadis de Jocelin—­the brother of your ancestor!—­that I have been thinking all the time how I could best show you that I was worthy of his teaching.  The world—­or the public—­you know the things they say of me—­but I do not want their praise.  I believe I could do something really great if you cared!—­for now it is only to please you that I live.”

A sense of shame stung him at this simple avowal.

“Nonsense!” he said, almost brusquely—­“You have a thousand other things to live for—­you must not think of pleasing me only.  Besides I’m not very—­keen on literature,—­I’m a painter.”

“Surely painting owes something to literature?” she queried—­“We should not have had all the wonderful Madonnas and Christs of the old masters if there had been no Bible!”

“True!—­but perhaps we could have done without them!” he said, lightly—­“I’m not at all sure that painting would not have got on just as well without literature at all.  There is always nature to study—­sky, sea, landscape and the faces of lovely women and children,—­quite enough for any man.  Where is Lord Blythe now?”