you back, I'd rather look at pictures and things by
myself and puzzle out their meaning. It's only I've begun so late."
She paused for a moment, and then without enthusiasm, almost sulkily;
"What did you do for him?"

Hubert embarked on it with gusto.

"Why, it wasn't really very much. It was just after my first book came
out, when I was twenty-six or so and he was at the Varsity or
somewhere. I suppose he read a notice or heard the book was selling or
something. Anyhow, he wrote me a most charming letter, the first I
ever had from any stranger, congratulating me on my success and asking,
if you please, how I had managed it as he heard I was young and he
wanted to become an author too! I answered all the usual stuff about
hard work and so on, which I see now he must have thought astounding
twaddle if he really was at Oxford, and told him when he came to Town
I'd like to meet him and perhaps could give him a few introductions.
As a matter of fact," he went on after brief reflection, "I never did
the last because I don't believe in it; but he came round at nights and
talked to me and always said I had encouraged him a lot just when a
little bucking-up was needed."

"And did he?" was Helena's sole comment.

Hubert at times could not follow her mind, fledgeling though it was, in
all its flights. "Did he what, dear?"

"Why, did he become an author?" answered Helena, with that impatient
tolerance which women keep for these occasions.

"Oh no," he said, vaguely annoyed, now, that he had not guessed it.
"Rather not! He's an artist now. Not terribly successful, you know,
but getting along. I don't think you would care much for his pictures,
though."

Secretly, within his mind he reconstructed Alison, remembering now some
not too pleasant drawings that he had brought along one night;
wondering if he had mentioned him too soon. But he saw only a keen,
harmless youth of the artistic type; a white man, certainly, who, even
if he had a morbid side, would never show it to a girl--or to his
benefactor's wife.

Yes, it was excellent. He had feared sometimes that she must be lonely
in the mornings or from five to seven, and Alison, he knew, was of the
work-when-I-feel-in-the-mood brigade (yes, it had certainly been
Oxford), for he had finally been forced to tell him he was absolutely
never free till after dinner-time.

He was the very man indeed. He spent his days in galleries, museums,
theatres; wanted not only s