“We have been interested in your manuscript, and while we do not feel that we can undertake its publication, we should like an opportunity to talk with you about it.”
“What does _that_ mean?” asked Corydon, trembling.
“God knows,” he answered. “I’ll go and see them this morning.”
When he came back, it was to sink into a chair and stare in front of him with a savage frown. “Don’t ask me!” he said, to Corydon. “Don’t ask!”
“Please tell me!” cried the girl. “Did you see them?”
“Yes--a fat man. A fat body, and a fat mind, and a fat soul.”
“He said my book wouldn’t sell, because the public had got tired of that sort of thing.”
“It seems that people used to buy ‘historical romances’, and now they’ve stopped. The man actually thought my book was one of that kind!”
“I see. But then--couldn’t you tell him?”
“I told him. I said, ‘Can’t you see that this book is original--that it’s come out of a man’s heart?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘perhaps. But you can’t expect the public to see it.’ And so there you are!”
Thyrsis sat with his nails dug into his palms. “It’s just like the book-reviews!” he cried. “He knows better, but that doesn’t count--he’s thinking about the public! And he’s got to the point where he doesn’t really care--he’s a fat man!”
“He’ll not have anything more to do with me. He hates me.”
“Yes. Because I have faith, and he hasn’t! Because I wouldn’t stoop to the indignity he offered!”
“He says that what the public’s reading now is society novels--stories about up-to-date people who are handsome and successful and rich. They want automobiles and theatre-parties and country-clubs in their novels.”
“But Thyrsis! You don’t know anything about such things!”
“I know. But he said I could find out. And so I could. The point he made was that I’ve got passion and color--I could write a moving love-story! In other words, I could use my ecstasy to describe two society-people mating!”
There was a pause. “And what did you do with the manuscript?” asked Corydon, in a low voice.
“I took it to another publisher,” he answered.
“I’ve been to see the editor of the ‘Treasure Chest.’”
The “Treasure Chest” was a popular magazine of fiction, a copy of which Thyrsis had seen lying upon the table of their landlady. He had glanced through the first story, and had declared to Corydon that if he had a stenographer he could talk such a story at the rate of twenty thousand words a day.