for you: "It's damned
clever, young 'un; damned clever. I shouldn't have thought it of you."

'And that reminds me,' I continue--I hesitate a little here, for I fear
what I am about to say may offend him--'what have you done to yourself
since I wrote you? I was looking you over the other day, and really I
could scarcely recognise you. You were full of brilliancy and
originality when you were in manuscript. What have you done with it
all?'

By some mysterious process he contrives to introduce an extra twist into
the squint with which he is regarding me, but makes no reply, and I
continue:

'Take, for example, that gem I lighted upon one drizzly night in
Portland Place. I remember the circumstance distinctly. I had been
walking the deserted streets, working at you; my note-book in one hand
and a pencil in the other. I was coming home through Portland Place,
when suddenly, just beyond the third lamp-post from the Crescent, there
flashed into my brain a thought so original, so deep, so true, that
involuntarily I exclaimed: "My God, what a grand idea!" and a
coffee-stall keeper, passing with his barrow just at that moment, sang
out: "Tell it us, guv'nor. There ain't many knocking about."

[Illustration: THAT BRILLIANT IDEA]

'I took no notice of the man, but hurried on to the next lamp-post to
jot down that brilliant idea before I should forget it; and the moment I
reached home I pulled you out of your drawer and copied it out on to
your pages, and sat long staring at it, wondering what the world would
say when it came to read it. Altogether I must have put into you nearly
a dozen startlingly original thoughts. What have you done with them?
They are certainly not there now.'

Still he keeps silence, and I wax indignant at the evident amusement
with which he regards my accusation.

'And the bright wit, the rollicking humour with which I made your pages
sparkle, where are they?' I ask him, reproachfully; 'those epigrammatic
flashes that, when struck, illumined the little room with a blaze of
sudden light, showing each cobweb in its dusty corner, and dying out,
leaving my dazzled eyes groping for the lamp; those grand jokes at which
I myself, as I made them, laughed till the rickety iron bedstead beneath
me shook in sympathy with harsh metallic laughter; where are they, my
friend? I have read you through, page by page, and the thoughts in you
are thoughts that the world has grown tired of thinking; at your wit one
smil