f the immense advertisement. His wife's gowns,
the sums he spent on her, the affection that he notoriously lavished
on her, were part of it.

I'll own that at one time I had a great devotion to Mrs. Wrackham
(circumstances have somewhat strained it since). She was a woman of
an adorable plumpness, with the remains of a beauty which must have
been pink and golden once. And she would have been absolutely simple
but for the touch of assurance that was given her by her position as
the publicly loved wife of a great man. Every full, round line of
her face and figure declared (I don't like to say advertised) her
function. She existed in and for Charles Wrackham. You saw that her
prominent breast fairly offered itself as a pillow for his head. Her
soft hands suggested the perpetual stroking and soothing of his
literary vanity, her face the perpetual blowing of an angelic
trumpet in his praise. Her entire person, incomparably soft, yet
firm, was a buffer that interposed itself automatically between
Wrackham and the bludgeonings of fate. As for her mind, I know
nothing about it except that it was absolutely simple. She was a
woman of one idea--two ideas, I should say, Charles Wrackham the
Man, and Charles Wrackham the Great Novelist.

She could separate them only so far as to marvel at his humanity
because of his divinity, how he could stoop, how he could
condescend, how he could lay it all aside and be delightful as we
saw him--"Like a boy, Mr. Simpson, like a boy!"

It was our second day, Sunday, and Wrackham had been asleep in his
shrine all afternoon while she piloted us in the heat about the
"grounds." I can see her now, dear plump lady, under her pink
sunshade, saying all this with a luminous, enchanting smile. We were
not to miss him; we were to look at him giving up his precious, his
inconceivably precious time, laying himself out to amuse, to
entertain us--"Just giving himself--giving himself all the time."
And then, lest we might be uplifted, she informed us, still with the
luminous, enchanting smile, that Mr. Wrackham was like that to
"everybody, Mr. Simpson; everybody!"

She confided a great many things to us that afternoon. For instance,
that she was greatly troubled by what she called "the ill-natured
attacks on Mr. Wrackham in the papers," the "things" that "They"
said about him (it was thus vaguely that she referred to some of our
younger and profaner critics). She was very sweet and amiable and
charitable