me what a clever fellow you are. I dare say I'm mad, but there it is. I must and will have the fame that is my due. Yes, though the sky fall and crush me!"
"I won't do it," said Dunkle. "Think of the scandal. Think of your family. Think of Chloë. It'll just about kill her with shame. Her father the author of 'Trixie'! She'll simply wilt and fade away."
"Well, but," said the Archdeacon, acutely, while he right-about-faced at the door, "it hasn't killed her to have her husband the author of it."
"No," Dunkle explained, "because I told her I wrote it as a joke, a burlesque, a parody on the Novel of Soupiness. But she'll never believe that you wrote it with any humorous intention. She's told me a hundred times that you've no sense of humour whatever. I don't say you have
