dejection to bed; but in the passage I encountered Mr. Vereker, who
had been up once more to change, coming out of his room. HE was

humming an air and had on a spotted jacket, and as soon as he saw
me his gaiety gave a start.

"My dear young man," he exclaimed, "I'm so glad to lay hands on
you! I'm afraid I most unwittingly wounded you by those words of

mine at dinner to Miss Poyle. I learned but half an hour ago from
Lady Jane that you're the author of the little notice in THE

MIDDLE."
I protested that no bones were broken; but he moved with me to my

own door, his hand, on my shoulder, kindly feeling for a fracture;
and on hearing that I had come up to bed he asked leave to cross my

threshold and just tell me in three words what his qualification of
my remarks had represented. It was plain he really feared I was

hurt, and the sense of his solicitude suddenly made all the
difference to me. My cheap review fluttered off into space, and

the best things I had said in it became flat enough beside the
brilliancy of his being there. I can see him there still, on my

rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, his fine clear face
all bright with the desire to be tender to my youth. I don't know

what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight of my
relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lips from

far within. It was so these words resently" target="_blank" title="ad.不久；目前">presently conveyed to me
something that, as I afterwards knew, he had never uttered to any

one. I've always done justice to the generousimpulse that made
him speak; it was simply compunction for a snub unconsciously

administered to a man of letters in a position inferior to his own,
a man of letters moreover in the very act of praising him. To make

the thing right he talked to me exactly as an equal and on the
ground of what we both loved best. The hour, the place, the

unexpectedness deepened the impression: he couldn't have done
anything more intensely effective.

CHAPTER III.
"I DON'T quite know how to explain it to you," he said, "but it was

the very fact that your notice of my book had a spice of
intelligence, it was just your exceptional sharpness, that produced

the feeling - a very old story with me, I beg you to believe -
under the momentary influence of which I used in speaking to that

good lady the words you so naturally resent. I don't read the
things in the newspapers unless they're thrust upon me as that one

was - it's always one's best friend who does it! But I used to
read them sometimes - ten years ago. I dare say they were in

general rather stupider then; at any rate it always struck me they
missed my little point with a perfection exactly as admirable when

they patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins.
Whenever since I've happened to have a glimpse of them they were

still blazing away - still missing it, I mean, deliciously. YOU
miss it, my dear fellow, with inimitable assurance; the fact of

your being awfully clever and your article's being awfully nice
doesn't make a hair's breadth of difference. It's quite with you

rising young men," Vereker laughed, "that I feel most what a
failure I am!"

I listened with keen interest; it grew keener as he talked. "YOU a
failure - heavens! What then may your 'little point' happen to

be?"
"Have I got to TELL you, after all these years and labours?" There

was something in the friendly reproach of this - jocosely
exaggerated - that made me, as an ardent young seeker for truth,

blush to the roots of my hair. I'm as much in the dark as ever,
though I've grown used in a sense to my obtuseness; at that moment,

however, Vereker's happy accent made me appear to myself, and
probably to him, a rare dunce. I was on the point of exclaiming

"Ah yes, don't tell me: for my honour, for that of the craft,
don't!" when he went on in a manner that showed he had read my

thought and had his own idea of the probability of our some day
redeeming ourselves. "By my little point I mean - what shall I

call it? - the particular thing I've written my books most FOR.
Isn't there for every writer a particular thing of that sort, the

thing that most makes him apply himself, the thing without the
effort to achieve which he wouldn't write at all, the very passion

of his passion, the part of the business in which, for him, the
flame of art burns most intensely? Well, it's THAT!"

I considered a moment - that is I followed at a respectful
distance, rather gasping. I was fascinated - easily, you'll say;

but I wasn't going after all to be put off my guard. "Your
description's certainly beautiful, but it doesn't make what you

describe very distinct."
"I promise you it would be distinct if it should dawn on you at

all." I saw that the charm of our topic overflowed for my
companion into an emotion as lively as my own. "At any rate," he

went on, "I can speak for myself: there's an idea in my work
without which I wouldn't have given a straw for the whole job.

It's the finest fullest intention of the lot, and the application
of it has been, I think, a triumph of patience, of ingenuity. I

ought to leave that to somebody else to say; but that nobody does
say it is precisely what we're talking about. It stretches, this

little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else,
comparatively, plays over the surface of it. The order, the form,

the texture of my books will perhaps some day constitute for the
initiated a complete representation of it. So it's naturally the

thing for the critic to look for. It strikes me," my visitor
added, smiling, "even as the thing for the critic to find."

This seemed a responsibility indeed. "You call it a little trick?"
"That's only my little modesty. It's really an exquisitescheme."

"And you hold that you've carried the scheme out?"
"The way I've carried it out is the thing in life I think a bit

well of myself for."
I had a pause. "Don't you think you ought - just a trifle - to

assist the critic?"
"Assist him? What else have I done with every stroke of my pen?

I've shouted my intention in his great blank face!" At this,
laughing out again, Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show

the allusion wasn't to my personal appearance.
"But you talk about the initiated. There must therefore, you see,

BE initiation."
"What else in heaven's name is criticism supposed to be?" I'm

afraid I coloured at this too; but I took refuge in repeating that
his account of his silver lining was poor in something or other

that a plain man knows things by. "That's only because you've
never had a glimpse of it," he returned. "If you had had one the

element in question would soon have become practically all you'd
see. To me it's exactly as palpable as the marble of this chimney.

Besides, the critic just ISN'T a plain man: if he were, pray, what
would he be doing in his neighbour's garden? You're anything but a

plain man yourself, and the very raison d'etre of you all is that
you're little demons of subtlety. If my great affair's a secret,

that's only because it's a secret in spite of itself - the amazing
event has made it one. I not only never took the smallest

precaution to keep it so, but never dreamed of any such accident.
If I had I shouldn't in advance have had the heart to go on. As it

was, I only became aware little by little, and meanwhile I had done
my work."

"And now you quite like it?" I risked.
"My work?"

"Your secret. It's the same thing."
"Your guessing that," Vereker replied, "is a proof that you're as

clever as I say!" I was encouraged by this to remark that he would
clearly be pained to part with it, and he confessed that it was

indeed with him now the great amusement of life. "I live almost to