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Mrs. Highmore hesitated. “It appears that she doesn’t seem in a hurry. Ray at any rate has jumped too far ahead of her. He should have temporised a little, Mr. Bousefield says; but I’m beginning to think, you know,” said my companion, “that Ray can’t temporise.” Fresh from my emotions of the previous twenty-four hours I was scarcely in a position to disagree with her. “He published too much pure thought.”

“Pure thought?” I cried. “Why, it struck me so often–certainly in a due proportion of cases–as pure drivel!”

“Oh, you’re more keyed up than he! Mr. Bousefield says that of course he wanted things that were suggestive and clever, things that he could point to with pride. But he contends that Ray didn’t allow for human weakness. He gave everything in too stiff doses.”

Sensibly, I fear, to my neighbour I winced at her words; I felt a prick that made me meditate. Then I said: “Is that, by chance, the way he gave me?” Mrs. Highmore remained silent so long that I had somehow the sense of a fresh pang; and after a minute, turning in my seat, I laid my hand on her arm, fixed my eyes upon her face and pursued pressingly: “Do you suppose it to be to my ‘Occasional Remarks’ that Mr. Bousefield refers?”

At last she met my look. “Can you bear to hear it?”

“I think I can bear anything now.”

“Well then, it was really what I wanted to give you an inkling of. It’s largely over you that they’ve quarrelled. Mr. Bousefield wants him to chuck you.”

I grabbed her arm again. “And Limbert won’t?”

“He seems to cling to you. Mr. Bousefield says no magazine can afford you.”

I gave a laugh that agitated the very coachman. “Why, my dear lady, has he any idea of my price?”

“It isn’t your price–he says you’re dear at any price; you do so much to sink the ship. Your ‘Remarks’ are called ‘Occasional,’ but nothing could be more deadly regular: you’re there month after month and you’re never anywhere else. And you supply no public want.”

“I supply the most delicious irony.”

“So Ray appears to have declared. Mr. Bousefield says that’s not in the least a public want. No one can make out what you’re talking about and no one would care if he could. I’m only quoting him, mind.”

“Quote, quote–if Limbert holds out. I think I must leave you now, please: I must rush back to express to him what I feel.”

“I’ll drive you to his door. That isn’t all,” said Mrs. Highmore. And on the way, when the carriage had turned, she communicated the rest. “Mr. Bousefield really arrived with an ultimatum: it had the form of something or other by Minnie Meadows.”

“Minnie Meadows?” I was stupefied.

“The new lady-humourist every one is talking about. It’s the first of a series of screaming sketches for which poor Ray was to find a place.” “Is that Mr. Bousefield’s idea of literature?” “No, but he says it’s the public’s, and you’ve got to take some account of the public. Aux grands maux les grands remedes. They had a tremendous lot of ground to make up, and no one would make it up like Minnie. She would be the best concession they could make to human weakness; she would strike at least this note of showing that it was not going to be quite all–well, all you. Now Ray draws the line at Minnie; he won’t stoop to Minnie; he declines to touch, to look at Minnie. When Mr. Bousefield–rather imperiously, I believe–made Minnie a sine qua non of his retention of his post he said something rather violent, told him to go to some unmentionable place and take Minnie with him. That of course put the fat on the fire. They had really a considerable scene.”

“So had he with the Beacon man,” I musingly replied. “Poor dear, he seems born for considerable scenes! It’s on Minnie, then, that they’ve really split?” Mrs. Highmore exhaled her despair in a sound which I took for an assent, and when we had rolled a little further I rather in-consequently and to her visible surprise broke out of my reverie. “It will never do in the world–he must stoop to Minnie!”