Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/160

152 "Oh, rats!" interrupted the artist. He lost himself in gloomy thoughts. His admirers misinterpreted him. His critics misrepresented him. And what did it all matter? Anne—Anne would not listen. He had chosen the wrong guiding-star, and all his reckonings were false.

"I'm like that young man of fame," he mused. "My brilliant future is behind me."

His convalescent melancholy took a didactic turn.

"Annabel," he said, turning to the child, "we have made a mistake about you. You ought to have been a story-writer. You have a genius for circumstantial invention."

"What is that, sir?"

"It's lying," said the young man gravely. "Now it's all very well, Annabel, for you to make things up when people know that you are telling stories. But when you are trying to make people believe what isn't so, it's downright wicked. It's mean. You might do no end of harm."