t judged him, as it judged all things, holding the pellucid
immaterial view. Its vision had never been bound, even by the
_Prolegomena_. If he had trusted it he might have been numbered among
those incorruptible spirits that preserve the immortal purity of
letters. As it was, that supreme intelligence was only a light by
which he saw clearly his own damnation.

CHAPTER LXXVII

Meanwhile the Junior Journalists found amusement in discussing whether
the great dramatist were Maddox's discovery or Jewdwine's. With the
readers of _Metropolis_ he passed as Jewdwine's--which was all that
Jewdwine wanted. With the earnest aspiring public, striving to admire
Keith Rickman because they had been told they ought to, he passed as
their own. The few who had known him from the first knew also that
poets like Rickman are never discovered until they discover
themselves. Maddox, whom much worship had made humble, gave up the
absurd pretension. Enough that he lived, and was known to live, with
Rickman as his friend.

They shared that little house at Ealing, which Rickman, in the ardour
of his self-immolation, had once destined for the young Delilah, his
bride. It had now become a temple in which Maddox served with all the
religious passion of his half-Celtic soul.

The poet had trusted the honour and the judgement of his friend so far
as to appoint him his literary executor. Thus Maddox became possessed
of the secret of the Sonnets. And here a heavy strain was put upon his
judgement and his honour. Maddox had guessed that there was a power in
Rickman's life more terrible than Jewdwine, who after all had never
really touched him. There was, Maddox had always known, a woman
somewhere. A thousand terrors beset the devotee when he noticed that
since fame had lighted upon Rickman the divinity had again begun to
furnish his part (the holy part) of the temple in a manner
unmistakably suggestive of mortality. Maddox shuddered as he thought
of the probable destination of that upper chamber which was the
holiest of all. And now this terror had become a certainty. The woman
existed; he knew her name; she was a cousin of the detestable
Jewdwine; the Sonnets could never be given to the world as long as she
withheld her consent, and apparently she did withhold it. More than
this had not been revealed to Maddox, and it was in vain that he tried
to penetrate the mystery.

His efforts were not the most delicate imaginable. One evening,
sitti