it that Michael, wherever he
is, knows all about that."

"Ay, ay," he said sagely, "I misdoubt your own artistic soul's only to be
saved by the writing of poor Michael's 'Life,' Harrison."

"Leave that to me and Michael; we'll settle that. In the meantime, if you
don't like it, write and publish the 'Life' yourself."

He bent his brows on me.

"It's precisely what I wanted to do from the varry first," he said. "If
you'd cared to accept my symposium in the spirit in which it was offered,
I cannot see that the 'Life' would have suffered. But now, when you're
next in need of my services, ye'll mebbe send for me."

He took up his hat. I assured him, and let him take it in what sense he
liked, that I would do so; and he left me.

Not for one single moment did I intend that they should bounce me like
that. With or without their sanction and countenance, I intended to write
and publish that "Life." Schofield--in my own house too--had had the
advantage that a poor and ill-dressed man has over one who is not poor
and ill-dressed; but my duty first of all was neither to him nor to
Maschka, but to my friend.

The worst of it was, however, that I had begun dimly to suspect that
the Lancastrian had hit at least one nail on the head. "Your artistic
soul's only to be saved by writing poor Michael's 'Life,'" he had
informed me... and it was truer than I found it pleasant to believe.
Perhaps, after all, my first duty was not to Andriaovsky, but to myself.
I could have kicked myself that the fool had been perspicacious enough to
see it, but that did not alter the fact. I saw that in the sense in which
Andriaovsky understood Sin, I had sinned....

My only defence lay in the magnitude of my sin. I had sinned
thoroughly, out-and-out, and with a will. It had been the only
respectable way--Andriaovsky's own way when he had cut the company
of an Academician to hobnob with a vagabond. I had at least instituted
no comparison, lowered no ideal, was innocent of the accursed attitude
of facing-both-ways that degrades all lovely and moving things. I was, by
a paradox, too black a sinner not to hope for redemption....

I fell into a long musing on these things....

Had any of the admirers of _Martin Renard_ entered the library of his
author that night he would have seen an interesting thing. He would
have seen the creator of that idol of clerks and messenger-lads and
fourth-form boys frankly putting the case before a portrait propped up on