icky-ticky, was one of peculiar delicacy--and danger."

"What does it matter?" said Rickman wearily. "I can trust my friends
to speak the truth about me."

"Heaven bless you, Rickman, and may your spring suitings last for
ever." He added, as Jewdwine had added, "Anyhow, this friend will do
his level best for you."

At which Rickman's demon returned again. "Don't crack me up too much,
Maddy. You might do me harm."

But before midnight Maddox burst into the office and flung himself on
to his desk.

"Give me room!" he cried; "I mean to spread myself, to roll, to
wallow, to wanton, to volupt!"

Before morning he had poured out his soul, in four columns of _The
Planet_, the exuberant, irrepressible soul of the Celt. He did it in
an hour and twenty minutes. As he said himself afterwards (relating
his marvellous achievement) he was sustained by one continuous
inspiration; his passionate pen paused neither for punctuation nor for
thought. The thoughts, he said, were there. As the critical notices
only appeared weekly, to pause would have entailed a delay of seven
days, and he meant that his panegyric should appear the very next day
after the article in the _Literary Observer_, as an answer to Hanson's
damnable paragraph.

If Maddox was urged to these excesses by his contempt for Jewdwine's
critical cowardice, Jewdwine was cooled by the spectacle of Maddox's
intemperance. He had begun by feeling a little bitter towards Rickman
on his own account. He was disappointed in him. Rickman had shown that
he was indifferent to his opinion. That being so, Jewdwine might have
been forgiven if he had had no very keen desire to help him. Still, he
_had_ desired to help him; but his desire had ceased after reading
Maddox's review. There was no pleasure in helping him now, since he
had allowed himself to be taken up and caressed so violently by other
people. The clumsy hand of Maddox had brushed the first bloom from his
Rickman, that once delightful youth. He was no longer Jewdwine's
Rickman, his disciple, his discovery.

But though Jewdwine felt bitter, he was careful that no tinge of this
personal feeling should appear in his review of Rickman's poems. It
was exceedingly difficult for him to review them at all. He had to
take an independent attitude, and most possible attitudes had been
taken already. He could not ignore Rickman's deplorable connection
with the Decadents; and yet he could not insist on it, for that was
what Hanson