And so it went on. One took off a conventional hat to Mr. Tanqueray's
sincerity; and one complained of "Mr. Tanqueray's own somewhat undraped
attitude toward the naked truth," observing that truth was not nearly so
naked as "Mr. Tanqueray would have us think." Another praised "his large
undecorated splendour." They split him up into all his attributes and
antitheses. They found wonder in his union of tenderness and brutality.
They spoke of "the steady beat of his style," and his touch, "the
delicate, velvet stroke of the hammer, driven by the purring dynamo."
Articles appeared ("The Novels of George Tanqueray;" "George Tanqueray:
an Appreciation;" "George Tanqueray: an Apology and a Protest"); with
the result that his publishers reported a slight, a very slight
improvement in his sales.

Besides this alien tribute there was Caro Bickersteth's large column in
the "Morning Telegraph," and Nicky's inspired eulogy in the "Monthly
Review." For, somehow, by the eternal irony that pursued him, Nicky's
reviews of other people could get in all right, while his own poems
never did and never would. And there was the letter that had preceded
Jinny's note, the letter that she wrote to him, as she said, "out of the
abyss." It brought him to her feet, where he declared he would be glad
to remain, whether Jinny's feet were in or out of the abyss.

Rose revived a little under this praise of Tanqueray. Not that she said
very much about it to him. She was too hurt by the way he thrust all his
reviews into the waste-paper basket, without showing them to her. But
she went and picked them out of the waste-paper basket when he wasn't
looking, and pasted all the good ones into a book, and burnt all the
bad ones in the kitchen fire. And she brought the reviews, and made her
boast of him to Aunt and Uncle, and told them of the nice sum of money
that his book had "fetched," this time. This was all he had been waiting
for, she said, before he took a little house at Hampstead.

For he had taken it at last, that little house. It was one of a terrace
of three that stood high above the suburb, close to the elm-tree walk
overlooking the West Heath. A diminutive brown-brick house, with jasmine
climbing all over it, and a little square of glass laid like a mat in
front of it, and a little garden of grass and flower-borders behind.
Inside, to be sure, there wasn't any drawing-room; for what did Rose
want with a drawing-room, she would like to know? Bu