ided him. He let it go, and it came back to him, caressing and
tormenting him, compelling his embrace. There were days when it pursued
and captured him, and then it had wings that swept him divinely to its
end. There were days when he had to go out and find it, and lure the
winged thing back to him. Once caught, it was unswerving in its
operations.

But Tanqueray had no lower power he could fall back upon when his genius
failed him. And apparently it had failed him now. In forty-eight hours
he had accomplished nothing.

At the end of the forty-ninth hour wasted, he drew his pen through what
he had written and sank into a depth as yet unknown to him. His genius
had before now appeared to him as an insane hallucination. But still he
had cared for it supremely. Now, the horrible thing was that he did not
care. His genius was of all things that which interested him least. He
was possessed by one trouble and by one want, the more devastating
because it was aimless and obscure.

That came of dining with Jane Holland.

He was not in love with Jane. On the contrary, he was very angry with
her for wanting him to be in love with her when he could not be. And he
was angry with himself for wanting to be in love with her when he could
not be, when his heart (by which the psychologist meant his senses) was
not in it.

But wherever his heart was, his thoughts, when he let them go, were
always running upon Jane. They ran on her now. He conceived of her more
than ever as the unfit. "She's too damnably clever," he kept saying to
himself, "too damnably clever." And he took up her last book just to see
again how damnably clever she was.

In an instant he was at her feet. She wasn't clever when she wrote that.
What a genius she had, what a burning, flashing, laughing genius. It
matched his own; it rose to it, giving him flame for flame. Almost as
clear-eyed it was, and tenderer hearted. Reading Jane Holland, Tanqueray
became depressed or exalted according to his mood. He was now depressed.

But he could not leave her. In spirit he remained at her feet. He bowed
himself in the dust. "I couldn't have done it," he said, "to save my
life. I shall never do anything like that."

He wrote and told her so. But he did not go to see her, as he would have
done six weeks ago.

And then he began wondering how she conceived these things if she did
not feel them. "I don't believe," he said, "that she doesn't feel. She's
like me." Too like him t