ut at
others, I'm overwhelmed by the thought of the life going on inside his
soul that I can never, never share--I can only see the spirit that
conceived 'The Diamond Gate'--don't you understand, darling?--and that
is even now creating some new thing of wonder and beauty. I feel so
little beside him. What more can I give him beyond what I have given?"

Barbara took the girl's tense face between her two hands and smiled and
kissed her.

"Give him," said she, "ammoniated quinine whenever he sneezes."

Then she laughed and embraced the Heavenly One's wife, who, for the
moment, had not quite decided whether to feel outraged or not, and
discoursed sweet reasonableness.

"I should treat your genius, dear, just as I treat my stupid old
Hilary."

She proceeded to describe the treatment. What it was, I do not know,
because Barbara refused to tell me. But I can make a shrewd guess. It's
a subtle scheme which she thinks is hidden from me; but really it is so
transparent that a babe could see through it. I, like any wise husband,
make, however, a fine assumption of blindness, and consequently lead a
life of unruffled comfort.

Whether Doria followed the advice I am not certain. I have my doubts.
Barbara has never knelt by the side of her stupid old Hilary's chair and
worshipped him as a god. She is an excellent wife and I've no fault to
find with her; but she has never done that, and she is the last woman in
the world to counsel any wife to do it. Personally, I should hate to be
worshipped. In worship hours I should be smoking a cigar, and who with a
sense of congruity can imagine a god smoking a cigar? Besides, worship
would bore me to paralysis. But Adrian loved it. He lived on it, just as
the new hand in a chocolate factory lives on chocolate creams. The more
he was worshipped the happier he became. And while consuming adoration
he had a young Dionysian way of inhaling a cigarette--a way which
Dionysus, poor god, might have exhibited, had tobacco grown with the
grape on Mount Cithaeron--and a way of exhaling a cloud of smoke, holier
than the fumes of incense in the nostrils of the adorer, which moved me
at once to envy and exasperation.

Yes, there he would sprawl, whenever I saw them together, either in
their own flat or at our house (more luxuriously at Northlands than in
St. John's Wood, owing to the greater prevalence of upholstered
furniture), cigarette between delicate fingers, paradox on his tongue
and a Christop