n
unfamiliar aspect, as it were a tragic simplicity and vastness. For
these things, once so restfully indifferent, had in a moment become
the background of his spiritual agony, a scene where his soul appeared
to him, standing out suddenly shelterless, naked and alone. No--if it
_had_ only been alone; but that was the peculiar horror of it. He
could have borne it but for the presence of the other man who had
called forth the appalling vision, and remained a spectator of it.

There was at least this much comfort for him in his pangs--he knew
that a man of coarser fibre would neither have felt nor understood
them. But it was impossible for Jewdwine to do an ignoble thing and
not to suffer; it was the innermost delicacy of his soul that made it
writhe under the destiny he had thrust upon it.

And in the same instant he recognized and acknowledged the greatness
of the man with whom he had to do; acknowledged, not grudgingly, not
in spite of himself, but because of himself, because of that finer
soul within his soul which spoke the truth in secret, being born to
recognize great things and admire them. He wondered now how he could
ever have mistaken Rickman. He perceived the origin and significance
of his attitude of disparagement, of doubt. It dated from a certain
hot July afternoon eight years ago when he lay under a beech-tree in
the garden of Court House and Lucia had insisted on talking about the
poet, displaying an enthusiasm too ardent to be borne. He had meant
well by Rickman, but Lucia's ardour had somehow put him off. Maddox's
had had the same effect, though for a totally different reason, and so
it had gone on. He had said to himself that if other people were going
to take Rickman that way he could no longer feel the same peculiar
interest.

He turned back again.

"Do you really mean it?" said he.

"I'm afraid I do."

"You mean that you intend to give up reviewing for _Metropolis_?"

"I mean that after this I can't have anything more to do with it."

He means, thought Jewdwine, that he won't have anything more to do
with me.

And Rickman saw that he was understood. He wondered how Jewdwine would
take it.

He took it nobly. "Well," he said, "I'm sorry. But if you must go, you
must. To tell the truth, my dear fellow, at this rate, you know, I
couldn't afford to keep you. I wish I could. You are not the only
thing I can't afford." He said it with a certain emotion not very
successfully concealed beneath h