Rhoda, and, with flaming cheeks, forced his way through the naive, bombastic contents. Contents which Rhoda had no doubt taken quite literally! One sentence in particular reduced him to the lowest degree of shame: When I do return to America, it will only be after I have proved to myself, and to the public, that I'm Somebody.
Despite Geoffrey's faithful promptitude, it seemed weeks before the manuscript came back. Grover went up to his own room to open it and to read the accompanying letter.
He was in his room for hours,—not reading the letter, for that had soon been perused; but thinking, and blowing smoke toward the ceiling, and wishing the world had a back door that he could sneak out of.
For it was the same old story. Though Geoffrey was kind—oh, so kind! which made it damnably worse, he allowed him only a nice little talent again.
"Put it away for two or three years and forget about it," Geoffrey counselled. "Then, if you reread it impersonally, I think you will see what I mean."
"Affectionately yours," Geoffrey concluded.
Affectionately hell, echoed Grover in his misery, wondering whether Rhoda's estimate of Geoffrey Saint might not have a shade of truth in it. "That man," she had once remarked, "is an incorrigible old prisstail—I don't see why you hang on his opinions the way you do."
At dinner he rallied his courage. Folly Daggett and
