"Madame Lagrande," he said, "has a fine nature, but in this instance it
has failed her, it has been warped by jealousy; not the jealousy that
often accompanies passion, for she and Robert Meunier were only great
friends, linked together by similar sympathies, but by a much more subtle
form of that mental disease. You know, Hermione, that both of them are
brilliant critics of literature?"
"Yes, yes."
"They carried on a sort of happy, but keen rivalry in this walk of
letters, each striving to be more unerring than the other in dividing the
sheep from the goats. I am the guilty person who made discord where there
had been harmony."
"You, Emile! How was that?"
"One day I said, in a bitter mood, 'It is so easy to be a critic, so
difficult to be a creator. You two, now would you even dare to try to
create?' They were nettled by my tone, and showed it. I said, 'I have a
magnificent subject for a conte, no work de longue haleine, a conte. If
you like I will give it you, and leave you to create--separately, not
together--what you have so often written about, the perfect conte.' They
accepted my challenge. I gave them my subject and a month to work it out.
At the end of that time the two contes were to be submitted to a jury of
competent literary men, friends of ours. It was all a sort of joke, but
created great interest in our circle--you know it, Hermione, that dines
at Réneau's on Thursday nights?"
"Yes. Well, what happened?"
"Madame Lagrande made a failure of hers, but Robert Meunier astonished us
all. He produced certainly one of the best contes that was ever written
in the French language."
"And Madame Lagrande?"
"It is not too much to say that from that moment she has almost hated
Robert."
"And you dare to say she has a noble nature?"
"Yes, a noble nature from which, under some apparently irresistible
impulse, she has lapsed."
"Maurice," said Hermione, leaning her long arms on the table and leaning
forward to her fiancé, "you're not in literature any more than I am,
you're an outsider--bless you! What d'you say to that?"
Delarey hesitated and looked modestly at Artois.
"No, no," cried Hermione, "none of that, Maurice! You may be a better
judge in this than Emile is with all his knowledge of the human heart.
You're the man in the street, and sometimes I'd give a hundred pounds for
his opinion and not twopence for the big man's who's in the profession.
Would--could a noble nature yield to such an impulse?"