ry of a
score of books. I wonder if you will help me to get it. I want Flaubert,
Stevenson, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck, Dumas _pere_, Keats, Marlowe,
Chatterton, Anatole France, Theophile Gautier, Dante, Goethe,
Meredith's poems, and his 'Egoist,' the Song of Solomon, too, Job, and,
of course, the Gospels."

"I shall be delighted to get them for you," I said, "if you will send me
the list. By the by, I hear that you have been reconciled to your wife;
is that true? I should be glad to know it's true."

"I hope it will be all right," he said gravely, "she is very good and
kind. I suppose you have heard," he went on, "that my mother died since
I came here, and that leaves a great gap in my life.... I always had the
greatest admiration and love for my mother. She was a great woman,
Frank, a perfect idealist. My father got into trouble once in Dublin,
perhaps you have heard about it?"

"Oh, yes," I said, "I have read the case." (It is narrated in the first
chapter of this book.)

"Well, Frank, she stood up in court and bore witness for him with
perfect serenity, with perfect trust and without a shadow of common
womanly jealousy. She could not believe that the man she loved could be
unworthy, and her conviction was so complete that it communicated itself
to the jury: her trust was so noble that they became infected by it, and
brought him in guiltless.[4] Extraordinary, was it not? She was quite
sure too of the verdict. It is only noble souls who have that assurance
and serenity....

[Illustration: "Speranza": Lady Wilde as a Young Woman]

"When my father was dying it was the same thing. I always see her
sitting there by his bedside with a sort of dark veil over her head:
quite silent, quite calm. Nothing ever troubled her optimism. She
believed that only good can happen to us. When death came to the man she
loved, she accepted it with the same serenity and when my sister died
she bore it in the same high way. My sister was a wonderful creature, so
gay and high-spirited, 'embodied sunshine,' I used to call her.

"When we lost her, my mother simply took it that it was best for the
child. Women have infinitely more courage than men, don't you think? I
have never known anyone with such perfect faith as my mother. She was
one of the great figures of the world. What she must have suffered over
my sentence I don't dare to think: I'm sure she endured agonies. She had
great hopes of me. When she was told that she was going to die