that we were not intended to suspect the truth."

Abner gasped--dredging the air for a word. "Of course," Bond went ahead,
less fantastically, "I know I ought to shut my eyes to all this and start
in to accomplish something more vital, more indigenous--less of the
marquise and more of the milkmaid, in fact----"

"Write about the things you know and like," said Abner curtly.

His tone acknowledged his inability to keep pace with such whimsicalities
or to sympathize with them.

"If to know and to like were one with me, as they appear to be with you!
A boyhood in the country--what a grand beginning! But the things I know
are the things I don't like, and the things I like are not always the
things I know--oftener the things I feel." Bond was speaking with a
greater sincerity than he usually permitted himself. The right touch just
then might have determined his future: he was quite as willing to become
a Veritist as to remain a mere Dilettante.

Abner tossed his head with a suppressed snort; he felt but little
inclined to give encouragement to this manikin, this tidier-up after
studio teas, this futile spinner of sophistications. No, the curse of a
city boyhood was upon the fellow. Why look for anything great or vital
from one born and bred in the vitiated air of the town?

"Oh, well," he said, half-contemptuously, and not half trying to hide his
contempt, "you are doing very well as it is. Some of your work is not
without traces of style; and I suppose style is what you are after. But
meat for _me_!"