a girlie"; with his oval
face, his flushed cheeks, his brown eyes, large and radiant, and his
hair of a length more romantic than conventional. He wore a wide blue
cloak, with a grace which hovered between that of an Italian poet and an
early pirate.

It was impossible not to discover, in a short conversation, that he was
very clever, but, as a girl said once of her first meeting with another
girl, "We looked at each other with horny eyes of disapproval." I
thought that he was affecting the poet, and in me he found a donnish
affectation of the British sportsman. He said later that I complained,
concerning Monsieur Paul de St. Victor, that he was "no sportsman,"
though his style was effulgent.

We seldom met again, unhappily, for I was then with a family in whose
company he would have been happy: all young, all kind, simple, and
beautiful, and all doomed. Stevenson was then seriously ill, certainly a
short walk fatigued him.

The next news I had of him was in his essay, "Ordered South," concerning
the emotions, apathies, and pleasures, on that then fairy coast, of a
young man who thinks that his days are numbered. After reading this
paper, I was absolutely convinced that, among the writers of our
generation, Stevenson was first, like Eclipse, and the rest nowhere.
There was nobody to be spoken of in his company as a writer. It was not
his style alone--Pater's style had bewitched me in his first book--but
it was the life that underlay the style of Stevenson.

He came home, and found peace at home, and a less inadequate allowance,
and he put up a brazen plate, "R. L. Stevenson, Advocate," on the door in
Heriot Row. But his practice was a jest. Some senior men sought his
society, his old friends were with him; his articles were welcomed by
Mr. Leslie Stephen in "The Cornhill Magazine," and were eagerly expected
by a few. Directed by Mr. Stephen, he found Mr. Henley in the Edinburgh
Infirmary, and that friendship began which was of such considerable
influence in his life and work.

Mr. Henley's "maimed strength," his impeded vigour, even his blond
upstanding hair and "beard all tangled," his uncomplaining fortitude
under the most cruel trials, and the candid freshness of his
conversation on men and books, won Stevenson's heart.

In London, Stevenson appeared now and again at the Savile Club, then
tenanting a rather gloomy little house in Savile Row. The members were
mostly connected with science, literature, journali