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“Behold,” said he, congratulating himself, “this is the best story I ever wrote! Blamed if it isn’t one of the best stories I ever read! Your romanticists claim that the realistic story has no charm, nor excitement, nor psychical thrill. This’ll show them!”

So he hurried to deliver it to Brown. Then he posed industriously to himself, and tried hard to do some more glooming, but it was difficult work. Someway he felt his cause not hopeless. This masterpiece would go far to convince her that he was right after all.

Three days later he received a note from Brown asking him to call. He did so. The editor handed him back his story, more in sorrow than in anger, and spoke reprovingly about deserting one’s principles. Brown was conscientious. He believed that the past counted nothing in face of the present. Severne pressed for an explanation. Then said Brown:

“Severne, I have used much of your stuff, and I have liked it. The sentences have been crisp. The adjectives have been served hot. You have eschewed poetic connotation. And, above all, you have shown men and life as they are. I am sorry to see that you have departed from that noble ideal.”

“But,” cried Severne, in expostulation, “do not these qualities appear in my story?”

“At first they do,” responded Brown, “but later–ah!” He sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“The ride down the canon,” he explained. “The sentences are crisp and the adjectives hot. But, alas! there is much poetic connotation, and, so far from representing real life, it seems to me only the perperoid lucubrations of a disordered imagination.”

“Why, that part is the most realistic in the whole thing!” cried the unhappy author, in distress.

“No,” replied the editor, firmly, “it is not. It is not realism at all. Even if there were nothing objectionable about the incident, the man’s feelings are frightfully overdrawn. No man ever was such an everlasting coward as you make out your hero! I should be glad to see something else of yours–but that, no!”

Somewhat damped, Severne took his manuscript home with him. There he re-read it. All his old enthusiasm returned. It was exactly true. Realism could have had no more accurate exposition of its principles. He cursed Brown, and inclosed stamps to the Decade. After a time he received a check and a flattering letter. Realism stood vindicated!

In due course the story appeared. During the interim Severne had found that his glooming was becoming altogether too realistic for his peace of mind. As time went on and he saw nothing of Lucy Melville, he began to realise that perhaps, after all, he was making a mistake somewhere. At certain recklessly immoral moments he even thought a very little of proving false to art. To such depths can the human soul descend!

The evening after the appearance of his story in the Decade, he was sitting in front of his open fire in very much that mood. The lamps had not been lighted. To him came Mortimer, his man. “A leddy to see you, sir; no name,” he announced, solemnly.

Severne arose in some surprise. “Light the lamp, and show her up,” he commanded, wondering who she could be.

At the sound of his voice, the visitor pushed into the room past Mortimer.

“Never mind the lamp,” cried Lucy Melville. The faithful Mortimer left the room, and–officially–heard no more.

“Why, Lucy!” cried Severne.

In the dim light he could see that her cheeks were glowing with excitement. She crossed the room swiftly, and put her hands on his shoulders. “Bob,” she said, gravely, with tears in her eyes, “I know I ought not to be here, but I just couldn’t help it! After you were so noble! And it won’t matter, for I’m going in just a minute.”

Severne cast his mind back in review of his noble acts. “What is it, Lucy?” he inquired.

“As if you could ask!” she cried. “I never knew of a man’s doing so tactful and graceful and beautiful a thing in my life! And I don’t care a bit, and I believe you were right, after all.”

“Right about what?” he begged, getting more and more bewildered.

“About the realism, of course.”

She looked up at him again, pointing out her chin in the most adorable fashion. Even serious-minded men have moments of lucidity. Severne had one now.

“Oh, no, you mustn’t, Bob–dear!” she cried, blushing.

“But really, Bob,” she went on, after a moment, “even if realism is all right, you must admit that your last story is the best thing you ever wrote.”

“Why, yes, I do think so,” he agreed, wondering what that had to do with it.

“I’m so glad you do. Do you know, Bob,” she continued, happily, “I read it all through before I noticed whose it was. And I kept saying to myself, ‘I do wish Bob could see this story. I’m sure it would convince him that imagination is better than realism’; for really, Bob,” she cried, with enthusiasm, “it is the best imaginative story I ever read. And when I got to the end, and saw the signature, and realised that you had deserted your literary principles just for my sake, and had actually gone to work and written such a splendid imaginative story after all you had said; and then, too, when I realised what a delicate way you had taken to let me know–because, of course, I never read that magazine of Brown’s–oh, Bob!” she concluded, quite out of breath.

Severne hesitated for almost a minute. He saw his duty plainly; he was serious-minded; he had no sense of humour. Then she looked up at him as before, pointing her chin out in the most adorable fashion.

“Oh, Bob! Again! I really don’t think you ought to!”

And Art; oh, where was it?