ys she requires another tip. She's really
quite morbid about it. But she must play fair--she _shan't_ see him!"
he emphatically added. I had a suspicion that they had even quarrelled a
little on the subject--a suspicion not corrected by the way he more than
once exclaimed to me: "She's quite incredibly literary, you know--quite
fantastically!" I remember his saying of her that she felt in italics
and thought in capitals. "Oh, when I've run him to earth," he also
said, "then, you know, I shall knock at his door. Rather--I beg you to
believe. I'll have it from his own lips: 'Right you are, my boy; you've
done it this time!' He shall crown me victor--with the critical laurel."

Meanwhile he really avoided the chances London life might have given him
of meeting the distinguished novelist; a danger however that disappeared
with Vereker's leaving England for an indefinite absence, as the
newspapers announced--going to the south for motives connected with the
health of his wife, which had long kept her in retirement. A year--more
than a year--had elapsed since the incident at Bridges, but I had not
encountered him again. I think at bottom I was rather ashamed--I
hated to remind him that though I had irremediably missed his point a
reputation for acuteness was rapidly overtaking me. This scruple led me
a dance; kept me out of Lady Jane's house, made me even decline, when
in spite of my bad manners she was a second time so good as to make me
a sign, an invitation to her beautiful seat. I once saw her with Vereker
at a concert and was sure I was seen by them, but I slipped out without
being caught. I felt, as on that occasion I splashed along in the rain,
that I couldn't have done anything else; and yet I remember saying to
myself that it was hard, was even cruel. Not only had I lost the books,
but I had lost the man himself: they and their author had been alike
spoiled for me. I knew too which was the loss I most regretted. I had
liked the man still better than I had liked the books.

VI

Six months after Vereker had left England George Corvick, who made his
living by his pen, contracted for a piece of work which imposed on him
an absence of some length and a journey of some difficulty, and his
undertaking of which was much of a surprise to me. His brother-in-law
had become editor of a great provincial paper, and the great provincial
paper, in a fine flight of fancy, had conceived the idea of sending a
"special commissio