This wasn't a challenge - it was fatherly advice. If I had had one

of his books at hand I'd have repeated my recent act of faith - I'd
have spent half the night with him. At three o'clock in the

morning, not sleeping, remembering moreover how indispensable he
was to Lady Jane, I stole down to the library with a candle. There

wasn't, so far as I could discover, a line of his writing in the
house.

CHAPTER IV.
RETURNING to town I feverishly collected them all; I picked out

each in its order and held it up to the light. This gave me a
maddening month, in the course of which several things took place.

One of these, the last, I may as well immediately mention, was that
I acted on Vereker's advice: I renounced my ridiculous attempt. I

could really make nothing of the business; it proved a dead loss.
After all I had always, as he had himself noted, liked him; and

what now occurred was simply that my new intelligence and vain
preoccupation damaged my liking. I not only failed to run a

general intention to earth, I found myself missing the subordinate
intentions I had formerly enjoyed. His books didn't even remain

the charming things they had been for me; the exasperation of my
search put me out of conceit of them. Instead of being a pleasure

the more they became a resource the less; for from the moment I was
unable to follow up the author's hint I of course felt it a point

of honour not to make use professionally of my knowledge of them.
I HAD no knowledge - nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I

could bear it - they only annoyed me now. At last they even bored
me, and I accounted for my confusion - perversely, I allow - by the

idea that Vereker had made a fool of me. The buried treasure was a
bad joke, the general intention a monstrous pose.

The great point of it all is, however, that I told George Corvick
what had befallen me and that my information had an immense effect

upon him. He had at last come back, but so, unfortunately, had
Mrs. Erme, and there was as yet, I could see, no question of his

nuptials. He was immensely stirred up by the anecdote I had
brought from Bridges; it fell in so completely with the sense he

had had from the first that there was more in Vereker than met the
eye. When I remarked that the eye seemed what the printed page had

been expressly invented to meet he immediately accused me of being
spiteful because I had been foiled. Our commerce had always that

pleasant latitude. The thing Vereker had mentioned to me was
exactly the thing he, Corvick, had wanted me to speak of in my

review. On my suggesting at last that with the assistance I had
now given him he would doubtless be prepared to speak of it himself

he admitted freely that before doing this there was more he must
understand. What he would have said, had he reviewed the new book,

was that there was evidently in the writer's inmost art something
to BE understood. I hadn't so much as hinted at that: no wonder

the writer hadn't been flattered! I asked Corvick what he really
considered he meant by his own supersubtlety, and, unmistakeably

kindled, he replied: "It isn't for the vulgar - it isn't for the
vulgar!" He had hold of the tail of something; he would pull hard,

pull it right out. He pumped me dry on Vereker's strange
confidence and, pronouncing me the luckiest of mortals, mentioned

half a dozen questions he wished to goodness I had had the gumption
to put. Yet on the other hand he didn't want to be told too much -

it would spoil the fun of seeing what would come. The failure of
MY fun was at the moment of our meeting not complete, but I saw it

ahead, and Corvick saw that I saw it. I, on my side, saw likewise
that one of the first things he would do would be to rush off with

my story to Gwendolen.
On the very day after my talk with him I was surprised by the

receipt of a note from Hugh Vereker, to whom our encounter at
Bridges had been recalled, as he mentioned, by his falling, in a

magazine, on some article to which my signature was attached. "I
read it with great pleasure," he wrote, "and remembered under its

influence our lively conversation by your bedroom fire. The
consequence of this has been that I begin to measure the temerity

of my having saddled you with a knowledge that you may find
something of a burden. Now that the fit's over I can't imagine how

I came to be moved so much beyond my wont. I had never before
mentioned, no matter in what state of expansion, the fact of my

little secret, and I shall never speak of that mystery again. I
was accidentally so much more explicit with you than it had ever

entered into my game to be, that I find this game - I mean the
pleasure of playing it - suffers considerably. In short, if you

can understand it, I've rather spoiled my sport. I really don't
want to give anybody what I believe you clever young men call the

tip. That's of course a selfish solicitude, and I name it to you
for what it may be worth to you. If you're disposed to humour me

don't repeat my revelation. Think me demented - it's your right;
but don't tell anybody why."

The sequel to this communication was that as early on the morrow as
I dared I drove straight to Mr. Vereker's door. He occupied in

those years one of the honest old houses in Kensington Square. He
received me immediately, and as soon as I came in I saw I hadn't

lost my power to minister to his mirth. He laughed out at sight of
my face, which doubtless expressed my perturbation. I had been

indiscreet - my compunction was great. "I HAVE told somebody," I
panted, "and I'm sure that person will by this time have told

somebody else! It's a woman, into the bargain."
"The person you've told?"

"No, the other person. I'm quite sure he must have told her."
"For all the good it will do her - or do ME! A woman will never

find out."
"No, but she'll talk all over the place: she'll do just what you

don't want."
Vereker thought a moment, but wasn't so disconcerted as I had

feared: he felt that if the harm was done it only served him
right. "It doesn't matter - don't worry."

"I'll do my best, I promise you, that your talk with me shall go no
further."

"Very good; do what you can."
"In the meantime," I pursued, "George Corvick's possession of the

tip may, on his part, really lead to something."
"That will be a brave day."

I told him about Corvick's cleverness, his admiration, the
intensity of his interest in my anecdote; and without making too

much of the divergence of our respective estimates mentioned that
my friend was already of opinion that he saw much further into a

certain affair than most people. He was quite as fired as I had
been at Bridges. He was moreover in love with the young lady:

perhaps the two together would puzzle something out.
Vereker seemed struck with this. "Do you mean they're to be

married?"
"I dare say that's what it will come to."

"That may help them," he conceded, "but we must give them time!"
I spoke of my own renewed assault and confessed my difficulties;

whereupon he repeated his former advice: "Give it up, give it up!"
He evidently didn't think me intellectually equipped for the

adventure. I stayed half an hour, and he was most good-natured,
but I couldn't help pronouncing him a man of unstable moods. He

had been free with me in a mood, he had repented in a mood, and now
in a mood he had turned indifferent. This general levity helped me

to believe that, so far as the subject of the tip went, there
wasn't much in it. I contrived however to make him answer a few

more questions about it, though he did so with visible impatience.
For himself, beyond doubt, the thing we were all so blank about was

vividly there. It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan,
something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly

approved of this image when I used it, and he used another himself.
"It's the very string," he said, "that my pearls are strung on!"

The reason of his note to me had been that he really didn't want to
give us a grain of succour - our density was a thing too perfect in

its way to touch. He had formed the habit of depending on it, and