ferent from your ordinary self that you couldn't be aware of
it in the ordinary way. There would always be a sort of divine
uncertainty about it."

"I'm afraid I don't agree with you. All the great geniuses have been
not only aware of themselves, but most uncommonly certain."

"Still, their genius may have been the part of themselves they
understood least. If they had tried to understand it, they would have
doubted too."

"There's something in that. You mean genius understands
everything--except itself?

"I think that's what I meant."

"Yes; but whether genius understands itself or not, whatever it does,
you see, it doesn't doubt."

"Doesn't it? Have you read Keats' letters? _He_ doubted."

"Only when he was in love with Fanny Brawne."

He paused abruptly. He was seized by an idea, a rushing irresistible
idea that lifted him off his feet and whirled him suddenly into a
region of light, tumultuous and profound. Keats was in love when he
doubted. Could that be the explanation of his own misgiving?

"That," he said hastily, "that's another thing altogether. Any way, if
you don't believe in yourself, you'll have some difficulty in making
other people believe in you."

"And if other people _do_ believe in you, before you believe in
yourself?"

"Before? It might be done before, but not after. You may make a man
conceited, but you can't give him back the conceit he had on Saturday,
if he's lost it all by Monday."

"That means that you know you've written a beautiful thing and you
only think you'll never write another."

"Perhaps it does." (He had to keep it up for the pleasure of hearing
her say she believed in him.)

"Well, I don't suppose you will write another _Helen in Leuce_."

"I'm afraid not." He went on to tell her that the wonder was how he
wrote the thing at all. It had been done anyhow, anywhere, in
successive bursts or spasms of creative energy; the circumstances of
his life (he referred to them with some diffidence) not being exactly
favourable to sustained effort. "How did _you_ feel about it?" he
inquired.

"I can hardly tell you. I think I felt as you feel about anything
beautiful that comes to you for the first time. I don't know what it
is you've done. It's as if something had been done to me, as if I'd
been given a new sense. It's like hearing Beethoven or Wagner for the
first time." As she spoke she saw the swift blood grow hot in his
face, she saw the slight trembling of the hand that