from his hand only at the
moment when from sudden failure of the heart his eyes, as he sank back
in his chair, closed for ever. _Derogation_ is a splendid fragment; it
evidently would have been one of his high successes. I am not prepared
to say it would have waked up the libraries.

THE WAY IT CAME

I find, as you prophesied, much that's interesting, but little that
helps the delicate question--the possibility of publication. Her diaries
are less systematic than I hoped; she only had a blessed habit of noting
and narrating. She summarised, she saved; she appears seldom indeed to
have let a good story pass without catching it on the wing. I allude of
course not so much to things she heard as to things she saw and felt.
She writes sometimes of herself, sometimes of others, sometimes of the
combination. It's under this last rubric that she's usually most vivid.
But it's not, you will understand, when she's most vivid that she's
always most publish-able. To tell the truth she's fearfully indiscreet,
or has at least all the material for making me so. Take as an instance
the fragment I send you, after dividing it for your convenience into
several small chapters. It is the contents of a thin blank-book which
I have had copied out and which has the merit of being nearly enough a
rounded thing, an intelligible whole. These pages evidently date from
years ago. I've read with the liveliest wonder the statement they so
circumstantially make and done my best to swallow the prodigy they leave
to be inferred. These things would be striking, wouldn't they? to any
reader; but can you imagine for a moment my placing such a document
before the world, even though, as if she herself had desired the world
should have the benefit of it, she has given her friends neither name
nor initials? Have you any sort of clue to their identity? I leave her
the floor.

I

I know perfectly of course that I brought it upon myself; but that
doesn't make it any better. I was the first to speak of her to him--he
had never even heard her mentioned. Even if I had happened not to speak
some one else would have made up for it: I tried afterwards to find
comfort in that reflection. But the comfort of reflections is thin: the
only comfort that counts in life is not to have been a fool. That's a
beatitude I shall doubtless never enjoy. "Why, you ought to meet her
and talk it over," is what I immediately said. "Birds of a feather flock
together." I