How often she had given her husband a thrill of exquisite pleasure by pointing to some merit or defect of which the common reader would be totally insensible! Now she spoke less frequently on such subjects.

Her interests were becoming more personal; she liked to hear details of the success of popular authors--about their wives or husbands, as the case might be, their arrangements with publishers, their methods of work.
The gossip columns of literary papers--and of some that were not literary--had an attraction for her.

She talked of questions such as international copyright, was anxious to get an insight into the practical conduct of journals and magazines, liked to know who 'read' for the publishing-houses.

To an impartial observer it might have appeared that her intellect was growing more active and mature.
More than half an hour passed.

It was not a pleasant train of thought that now occupied her.