made all these remarks at once; but there wasn't
one that he didn't make at one time or another, for suggestion and
occasion were plentiful enough, his life being now given up altogether
to his new necessity. It wasn't a question of his having or not having,
as they say, my intellectual sympathy: the brute force of the pressure
left no room for judgment; it made all emotion a mere recourse to the
spyglass. I watched him as I should have watched a long race or a
long chase, irresistibly siding with him but much occupied with the
calculation of odds. I confess indeed that my heart, for the endless
stretch that he covered so fast, was often in my throat. I saw him peg
away over the sun-dappled plain, I saw him double and wind and gain and
lose; and all the while I secretly entertained a conviction. I wanted
him to feed his many mouths, but at the bottom of all things was my
sense that if he should succeed in doing so in this particular way I
should think less well of him. Now I had an absolute terror of that.
Meanwhile so far as I could I backed him up, I helped him: all the more
that I had warned him immensely at first, smiled with a compassion it
was very good of him not to have found exasperating over the complacency
of his assumption that a man could escape from himself. Ray Limbert at
all events would certainly never escape; but one could make believe
for him, make believe very hard--an undertaking in which at first
Mr. Bousefield was visibly a blessing. Limbert was delightful on the
business of this being at last my chance too--my chance, so miraculously
vouchsafed, to appear with a certain luxuriance. He didn't care
how often he printed me, for wasn't it exactly in my direction Mr.
Bousefield held that the cat was going to jump? This was the least he
could do for me. I might write on anything I liked--on anything at least
but Mr. Limbert's second manner. He didn't wish attention strikingly
called to his second manner; it was to operate insidiously; people were
to be left to believe they had discovered it long ago. "Ralph Limbert?
Why, when did we ever live without him?"--that's what he wanted them
to say. Besides, they hated manners--let sleeping dogs lie. His
understanding with Mr. Bousefield--on which he had had not at all to
insist; it was the excellent man who insisted--was that he should run
one of his beautiful stories in the magazine. As to the beauty of his
story however Limbert was going to be less admirably