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"The ass brays acknowledgments," answered Bunsey meekly, helping himself to another cigar. "You may rely on my loyal and devoted interest. The fact that I have heard your secret twice before to-day shall not open my lips or cause me to violate your trust." Notwithstanding my attitude of indifference I was greatly troubled by Bunsey's unfeeling suggestion.
Bunsey is a popular novelist, not a literary man." "But isn't a novelist a literary man?" she asked in amazement. "Not necessarily," I replied pityingly. "In fact I may say not usually. Of course we are speaking of popular novelists. The popularity of the novelist is in proportion to his lack of literary style.
And while thus reasoning Phyllis came to me, so winsome in her girlish beauty, so radiant in the happiness I had infused into her life, so joyous in the pleasures of the present, that I laughed at my own doubts, reproached myself for my own unworthy suspicions, and straightway forgot both Bunsey and his evil promptings.
"Thank you for your appreciative estimate of my literary style," he replied coolly; "but really, my consideration for my old friend deprives me of the pleasure of robbing his diary." I was still out of temper. "Bunsey, I don't mind favoring you with a further confidence. You're an ass!"
The more I saw of her the more I was persuaded that I had chosen wisely and well. One afternoon Frederick, at my suggestion, had gallantly given up his work in the office and taken Phyllis down the river. I sat with Bunsey in the library, and took occasion to expound to him the philosophy of perfect love. "The trouble is," I said, "that people rush blindly into matrimony.
The distinctive popular charm of Bunsey is that he is not literary at least, if he is, his critics have not succeeded in discovering it; he successfully conceals his crime. If he is popular, it is because he is not literary; if he were literary he could not be popular." "That does not seem right," said my little Puritan. "It is not a question of ethics at all, but a matter of taste.
This appeared to call for an explanation. Heaven knows I am not jealous of Bunsey, and would not deprive him of a single distinction that is honestly his. But a regard for the truth, coupled with much doubt as to Bunsey's ability to live up to such lively expectations, compelled me to resort to a little gentle correction. "My dear Phyllis," I said, "you must disabuse your mind of that fallacy.
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