man's footman, his liveried
parlourmaid, and the daunting effect of the electric brougham at the
door.

"He's a good man," he said to me afterwards, ruefully looking at the
place where his boot-heel had been. "You've got to take your good where
you find it. I don't care whether he's a rich amateur or skin-and-grief
in a garret as long as he's got the stuff in him. Nobody else could have
fetched me up from the East End this afternoon.... So long; see you in a
week or so--"

This was the only time I ever knew him break that sacred time in which he
celebrated each year the Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles. I doubt
whether this observance of the ritual of his Faith was of more essential
importance to him than that other philosophical religion towards which he
sometimes leaned. I have said what his real religion was.

But to the "Life."

With these things, and others, as a beginning, I began to add page to
page, phase to phase; and, in a time the shortness of which astonished
myself, I had pretty well covered the whole of the first ten years of our
friendship. Maschka called rather less, and Schofield rather more
frequently, than I could have wished; and my surmise that he, at least,
was in love with her, quickly became a certainty. This was to be seen
when they called together.

It was when they came together that something else also became apparent.
This was their slightly derisive attitude towards the means by which I
had attained my success. It was not the less noticeable that it took the
form of compliments on the outward and visible results. Singly I could
manage them; together they were inclined to get a little out of hand.

I would have taxed them fairly and squarely with this, singly or
together, but for one thing--the beautiful ease with which the "Life" was
proceeding. Never had I felt so completely _en rapport_ with my subject.
So beautifully was the thing running that I had had the idle fancy of
some actual urge from Andriaovsky himself; and each night, before sitting
down to work, I set his portrait at my desk's end, as if it had been some
kind of an observance. The most beautiful result of all was, that I felt
what I had not felt for five years--that I too was not "doing" my work,
but actually living and being it. At times I took up the sheets I had
written as ignorant of their contents as if they had proceeded from
another pen--so freshly they came to me. And once, I vow, I found, in my
own handw