have the greatest admiration
for Mr. Ambient."

"He will like that. He likes being admired."

"He must have a very happy life, then. He has many worshippers."

"Oh, yes, I have seen some of them," said Mrs. Ambient, looking away,
very far from me, rather as if such a vision were before her at the
moment Something in her tone seemed to indicate that the vision was
scarcely edifying, and I guessed very quickly that she was not in
sympathy with the author of _Beltraffio_. I thought the fact strange,
but, somehow, in the glow of my own enthusiasm, I did n't think it
important; it only made me wish to be rather explicit about that
enthusiasm.

"For me, you know," I remarked, "he is quite the greatest of living
writers."

"Of course I can't judge. Of course he's very clever," said Mrs.
Ambient, smiling a little.

"He's magnificent, Mrs. Ambient! There are pages in each of his books
that have a perfection that classes them with the greatest things.
Therefore, for me to see him in this familiar way,--in his habit as he
lives,--and to find, apparently, the man as delightful as the artist,
I can't tell you how much too good to be true it seems, and how great a
privilege I think it." I knew that I was gushing, but I could n't help
it, and what I said was a good deal less than what I felt. I was by no
means sure that I should dare to say even so much as this to Ambient
himself, and there was a kind of rapture in speaking it out to his
wife which was not affected by the fact that, as a wife, she appeared
peculiar. She listened to me with her face grave again, and with her
lips a little compressed, as if there were no doubt, of course, that
her husband was remarkable, but at the same time she had heard all this
before and couldn't be expected to be particularly interested in it.
There was even in her manner an intimation that I was rather young, and
that people usually got over that sort of thing. "I assure you that for
me this is a red-letter day," I added.

She made no response, until after a pause, looking round her, she said
abruptly, though gently, "We are very much afraid about the fruit this
year."

My eyes wandered to the mossy, mottled, garden walls, where plum-trees
and pear-trees, flattened and fastened upon the rusty bricks, looked
like crucified figures with many arms. "Does n't it promise well?" I
inquired.

"No, the trees look very dull. We had such late frosts."

Then there was another pause. Mrs. Ambien