but softened by his traffic with the world. There was
moreover an indescribable pathos in the contrast presented by the
remains of the old self, its loftiness, its lucidity, and the
vulgarity with which he had wrapped it round. Jewdwine's intellectual
splendour had never been so impressive as now when it showed thus
tarnished and obscured.

"At any rate," he went on, "he is infinitely less absurd. He knows his
limitations. Also his mistakes. He tried to turn the republic of
letters into a limited monarchy. Now he has surrendered to the
omnipotence of facts."

"You mean he has lowered his standard?"

"My dear girl, what am I to do with my standard? Look at the rabble
that are writing. I can't compare Tompkins with Shakespeare or Brown
with Sophocles. I'm lucky if I can make out that Tompkins has
surpassed Brown this year as Brown surpassed Tompkins last year; in
other words, that Tompkins has surpassed himself."

"And so you go on, looking lower and lower."

"N-n-no, Lucia. I don't look lower; I look closer, I see that there is
something to be said for Tompkins after all. I find subtler and
subtler shades of distinction between him and Brown. I become more
just, more discriminating, more humane."

"I know how fine your work is, and that's just the pity of it. You
might have been a great critic if you hadn't wasted yourself on little
things and little men."

"If a really big man came along, do you think I should look at them?
But he doesn't come. I've waited for him ten years, Lucia, and he
hasn't come."

"Oh, Horace--"

"He hasn't. Show me a big man, and I'll fall down and worship him.
Only show him me."

"That's your business, isn't it, not mine? Still, I can show you one,
not very far off, in fact very near."

"Too near for us to judge him perhaps. Who is he?"

"If I'm not mistaken, he's a sort of friend of yours."

"Keith Rickman? Oh--"

"Do you remember the day we first talked about him?"

He did indeed. He remembered how unwilling he had been to talk about
him; and he was still more unwilling now. He wanted, and Lucia knew
that he wanted, to talk about himself.

"It's ten years ago," she said. "Have you been waiting all this time
to see him?"

He coloured. "I saw him before you did, Lucia. I saw him a very long
way off. I was the first to see."

"Were you? Then--oh Horace, if you saw all those years ago why haven't
you said so?"

"I have said so, many times."

"Whom have you said it to?