tacle to equal
that? I sit there and watch them every night before I go home. Softly
open the sash.'

Beneath them was an alley running up to the wall, and thence turning
sideways and passing under an arch, so that Knight's back window
was immediately over the angle, and commanded a view of the alley
lengthwise. Crowds--mostly of women--were surging, bustling, and pacing
up and down. Gaslights glared from butchers' stalls, illuminating the
lumps of flesh to splotches of orange and vermilion, like the wild
colouring of Turner's later pictures, whilst the purl and babble of
tongues of every pitch and mood was to this human wild-wood what the
ripple of a brook is to the natural forest.

Nearly ten minutes passed. Then Knight also came to the window.

'Well, now, I call a cab and vanish down the street in the direction
of Berkeley Square,' he said, buttoning his waistcoat and kicking his
morning suit into a corner. Stephen rose to leave.

'What a heap of literature!' remarked the young man, taking a final
longing survey round the room, as if to abide there for ever would be
the great pleasure of his life, yet feeling that he had almost outstayed
his welcome-while. His eyes rested upon an arm-chair piled full of
newspapers, magazines, and bright new volumes in green and red.

'Yes,' said Knight, also looking at them and breathing a sigh of
weariness; 'something must be done with several of them soon, I suppose.
Stephen, you needn't hurry away for a few minutes, you know, if you want
to stay; I am not quite ready. Overhaul those volumes whilst I put on my
coat, and I'll walk a little way with you.'

Stephen sat down beside the arm-chair and began to tumble the books
about. Among the rest he found a novelette in one volume, THE COURT OF
KELLYON CASTLE. By Ernest Field.

'Are you going to review this?' inquired Stephen with apparent
unconcern, and holding up Elfride's effusion.

'Which? Oh, that! I may--though I don't do much light reviewing now. But
it is reviewable.'

'How do you mean?'

Knight never liked to be asked what he meant. 'Mean! I mean that the
majority of books published are neither good enough nor bad enough to
provoke criticism, and that that book does provoke it.'

'By its goodness or its badness?' Stephen said with some anxiety on poor
little Elfride's score.

'Its badness. It seems to be written by some girl in her teens.'

Stephen said not another word. He did not care to speak plainly of
El