ight that the entire scheme of things existed solely to unfold and
multiply and vary the everlasting-to-everlasting-world-without-end
communion between God and the soul. To him this communion was a fact, a
fact above all facts, the supremely and only interesting fact. It was so
natural a thing that he sang about it as spontaneously as other poets
sing about their love and their mistresses. So simple and so
self-evident was it that he had called his latest and greatest poems
"Transparences."

"It sounds," she said, "as if you saw what he sees."

"I don't," said Tanqueray. "I only see _him_."

At that, all of a sudden, the clever imp broke down.

"George," she said, "I love you--I don't care if Rose _does_ hear--I
love you for defending him."

[Illustration: "George," she said ... "I love you for defending him."]

"Love me for something else. He doesn't need defending."

"Not he! But all the same I love you."

It was as if she had drawn aside a fold of her pretty garment and shown
him, where the scar had been, a jewel, a pearl with fire in the white of
it.

LVII

They were right. Worse things were reserved for Prothero than had
happened to him yet. Even Caro Bickersteth had turned. Caro had done her
best to appreciate competently this creator adored by creators. Caro,
nourished on her "Critique of Pure Reason," was trying hard to hold the
balance of justice in the "Morning Telegraph"; and according to Caro
there was a limit. She had edited Shelley and she knew. She was frankly,
as she said, unable to follow Mr. Prothero in his latest flight. There
was a limit even to the imagination of the mystic, and to the poet's
vision of the Transcendent. There were, Caro said, regions of ether too
subtle to sustain even so imponderable a poet as Mr. Prothero. So there
wasn't much chance, Tanqueray remarked, of their sustaining Caro.

But the weight of Caro's utterances increased, as they circulated,
formidably, among the right people. All the little men on papers
declared that there was a limit, and that Prothero had passed it.

It was barely a year since the publication of his last volume, and they
were annoyed with Prothero for daring to show his face again so soon in
the absence of encouragement. It looked as if he didn't care whether
they encouraged him or not. Such an attitude in a person standing on his
trial amounted to contempt of court. When his case came up for judgment
in the papers, the jury were rem