and a callous friend. She had been prepared to be nice to him if they
had kept Rickman out of their conversation; but as the subject had
arisen she had meant to give Horace a terribly bad quarter of an hour;
she had meant to turn him inside out and make him feel very mean and
pitiful and small. And somehow it hadn't come off. Instead of
diminishing as he should have done, Horace had worked himself
gradually up to her height, had caught flame from her flame, and now
he was consuming her with her own fire. It was she who had taken, the
view most degrading to the man she admired; she who would have dragged
her poet down to earth and put him on a level with Rankin and Fulcher
and such people. Horace would have her believe that his own outlook
was the clearer and more heavenly; that he understood Rickman better;
that he saw that side of him that faced eternity.

His humility, too, was pathetic and disarmed her indignation. At the
same time he made it appear that this was a lifting of the veil, a
glimpse of the true Jewdwine, the soul of him in its naked simplicity
and sincerity. And she was left uncertain whether it were not so.

"Even so," she said gently; "think of all you will have missed."

"Missed, Lucia?"

"Yes, missed. I think, to have believed in any one's greatness--the
greatness of a great poet--to have been allowed to hold in your hands
the pure, priceless thing, before the world had touched it--to have
seen what nobody else saw--to feel that through your first glorious
sight of him he belonged to you as he never could belong to the world,
that he was your own--that would be something to have lived for. It
would be greatness of a kind."

He bowed his head as it were in an attitude as humble and reverent as
her own. "And yet," he said, "the world does sometimes see its poet
and believe in him."

"It does--when he works miracles."

"Someday he will work his miracle."

"And when the world runs after him you will follow."

"I shall not be very far behind."

CHAPTER LXXVI

He wondered how it was that Lucia had seen what he could not see. As
far as he understood his own attitude to Rickman, he had begun by
being uncertain whether he saw or not; but he had quite honestly
desired to see. Yet he had not seen; not because he was incapable of
seeing but because there had come a time when he had no longer desired
to see; and from not desiring to see he had gone on till he had ended
by not seeing. Then