t--does her illness--make all that difference? It makes none to
me."

"Oh, well--all right--if you think you can make her happy."

"My dear Jewdwine, I don't think, I know." He smiled that smile that
Jewdwine had seen once or twice before. "It may be arrogant to suppose
that I'll succeed where better men might fail; still--" He rose and
drew himself up to all his slender height--"in some impossible things
I have succeeded."

"They are not the same things."

"No; but in both, you see, it all depends upon the man." With that he
left him.

As Rickman's back turned on him, Jewdwine perceived his own final
error. As once before in judging the genius he had reckoned without
the man, so now, in judging the man he had reckoned without his
genius.

This horrid truth came home to him in his solitude. In the
interminable watches of the night Jewdwine acknowledged himself a
failure; and a failure for which there was no possible excuse. He had
had every conceivable advantage that a man could have. He had been
born free; free from all social disabilities; free from pecuniary
embarrassment; free from the passions that beset ordinary men. And he
had sold himself into slavery. He had opinions; he was packed full of
opinions, valuable opinions; but he had never had the courage of them.
He had always been a slave to other people's opinions. Rickman had
been born in slavery, and he had freed himself. When Rickman stood
before him, superb in his self-mastery, he had felt himself conquered
by this man, whom, as a man, he had despised. Rickman's errors had
been the errors of one who risks everything, who never deliberates or
counts the cost. And in their repeated rivalries he had won because he
had risked everything, when he, Jewdwine, had lost because he would
risk nothing.

He had lost ever since the beginning. He had meant to discover this
great genius; to befriend him; to protect him with his praise;
eventually to climb on his shoulders into fame. And he had not
discovered him; and as for climbing on his shoulders, he had been
shaken off with one shrug of them. There had been risk in passing
judgement on young Rickman, and he had not taken the risk. Therefore
he had failed as a critic. He had waited to found an incorruptible
review. It had been a risky proceeding, and he had not taken the risk.
His paper was a venal paper, sold like himself to the public he
despised. Of all that had ever appeared in it, nothing would live,
noth