Merely Mary Ann by Israel Zangwill — Read

It was a long time before Mary Ann came so prominently into the centre of / Lancelot's consciousness again. She remained somewhere in the outer / periphery of his thought -- nowhere near the bull's-eye, so to speak -- as a / vague automaton that worked when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely more / important things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had somehow put a / keener edge on his blunted self-confidence; he had started a grand opera, / and worked at it furiously in all the intervals left him by his / engrossing pursuit after a publisher. Sometimes he would look up from his / hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his side surveying him curiously, and / then he would start, and remember he had rung her up, and try to remember / what for. And Mary Ann would turn red, as if the fault was hers.

But the publisher was the one thing that was never out of Lancelot's / mind, though he drove Lancelot himself nearly out of it. He was like an / arrow stuck in the aforesaid bull's-eye, and, the target being conscious, / he rankled sorely. Lancelot discovered that the publisher kept a "musical / adviser," whose advice appeared to consist of the famous monosyllable, / "Don't. " The publisher generally published all the musical adviser's own / works, his advice having apparently been neglected when it was most worth / taking; at least so Lancelot thought, when he had skimmed through a set / of Lancers by one of these worthies.