“Oh, yes.  How very odd,” said Peter.  “By a curious chance, I know it very well.  But I ’m surprised to discover that you do.  How on earth did it fall into your hands?”

“Why on earth shouldn’t it?” wondered she.  “Novels are intended to fall into people’s hands, are they not?”

“I believe so,” he assented.  “But intentions, in this vale of tears, are not always realised, are they?  Anyhow, ’A Man of Words’ is not like other novels.  It’s peculiar.”

“Peculiar—?” she repeated.

“Of a peculiar, of an unparalleled obscurity,” he explained.  “There has been no failure approaching it since What’s-his-name invented printing.  I hadn’t supposed that seven copies of it were in circulation.”

“Really?” said the Duchessa.  “A correspondent of mine in London recommended it.  But—­in view of its unparalleled obscurity is n’t it almost equally a matter for surprise that you should know it?”

“It would be, sure enough,” consented Peter, “if it weren’t that I just happen also to know the author.”

“Oh—?  You know the author?” cried the Duchessa, with animation.

“Comme ma poche,” said Peter.  “We were boys together.”

“Really?” said she.  “What a coincidence.”

“Yes,” said he.

“And—­and his book?” Her eyebrows went up, interrogative.  “I expect, as you know the man, you think rather poorly of it?”

“On the contrary, in the teeth of verisimilitude, I think extremely well of it,” he answered firmly.  “I admire it immensely.  I think it’s an altogether ripping little book.  I think it’s one of the nicest little books I’ve read for ages.

“How funny,” said she.

“Why funny?” asked he.

“It’s so unlikely that one should seem a genius to one’s old familiar friends.”

“Did I say he seemed a genius to me?  I misled you.  He does n’t.  In fact, he very frequently seems—­but, for Charity’s sake, I ’d best forbear to tell.  However, I admire his book.  And—­to be entirely frank—­it’s a constant source of astonishment to me that he should ever have been able to do anything one-tenth so good.”

The Duchessa smiled pensively.

“Ah, well,” she mused, “we must assume that he has happy moments—­or, perhaps, two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his manuscripts when he’s writing.  You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.  That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend.  But you pique my interest.  What is the trouble with him?  Is—­is he conceited, for example?”

“The trouble with him?” Peter pondered.  “Oh, it would be too long and too sad a story.  Should I anatomise him to you as he is, I must blush and weep, and you must look pale and wonder.  He has pretty nearly every weakness, not to mention vices, that flesh is heir to.  But as for conceit . . . let me see.  He concurs in my own high opinion of his work, I believe; but I don’t know whether, as literary men go, it would be fair to call him conceited.  He belongs, at any rate, to the comparatively modest minority who do not secretly fancy that Shakespeare has come back to life.”