mes--it will come too--when he has made
his name with no thanks to you, then you'll be the first to say 'I
told you so.' It would have been a greater thing to have helped him
when he needed it."

"I did help him. He wouldn't be writing now if it wasn't for me."

"Do you see much of him?"

"Not much. It isn't my fault," he added in answer to her reproachful
eyes. "He's shut himself up with Maddox in a stuffy little house at
Ealing."

"Does that mean that he's very badly off?"

"Well, no; I shouldn't say so. He's got an editorship. But he isn't
the sort that's made for getting on. In many things he is a fool."

"I admire his folly more than some people's wisdom."

From the look in Lucia's eyes Jewdwine was aware that his cousin no
longer adored him. Did she adore Rickman?

"You're a little hard on me, I think. After all, I was the first to
help him."

"_And_ the last. Are you quite sure you helped him? How do you know
you didn't hinder him? You kept him for years turning out inferior
work for you, when he might have been giving us his best."

"He might--if he'd been alive to do it."

"I'm only thinking of what you might have done. The sort of thing
you've done for other people--Mr. Fulcher, for instance."

Jewdwine blushed as he had never blushed before. He was not given to
that form of self-betrayal.

"You said just now you could either kill a book in twenty-four hours,
or make it--did you say?--immortal."

"I might have said I could keep it alive another twenty-four hours."

"You know the reputations you have made for people."

"I do know them. I've made enough of them to know. The reputations
I've made will not last. The only kind that does last is the kind that
makes itself. Do you seriously suppose a man like Rickman needs my
help? I am a journalist, and the world that journalists are compelled
to live in is very poor and small. He's in another place altogether. I
couldn't dream of treating him as I treat, say, Rankin or Fulcher. The
best service I could do him was to leave him alone--to keep off and
give him room."

"Room to stand in?"

"No. Room to grow in, room to fight in--"

"Room to measure his length in when he falls?"

"If you like. Rickman's length will cover a considerable area."

Lucia looked at her cousin with genuine admiration. How clever, how
amazingly clever he was! She knew and he knew that he had failed in
generosity to Rickman; that he had been a more than cautious critic