w it's Thackeray.'

'Keats anywhere?'

'Oh! Keats?9 The tone was enough.

'Favourite bit of Keats now?'

'Oh, sir, you can't have favourite bits of Keats.'

'Come! _The_ darling.'

'"St Agnes,"' said Paul; 'Chapman's Homer, "The Nightingale,"
"Hyperion."'

'Oh! One love at a time.'

'I can't, sir.'

'Wordsworth?'

'That's easier, Mr. Ralston. "The Intimations."' 'Byron?'

'Oh! "The Don"--miles and miles, sir.' 'Where's Shakespeare--eh?'

'In the bosom of God Almighty.'

So cheerily the talk had gone, so rapidly, he had no taint of shyness
left. Here was the man of his worship since he had first dared to play
the pious truant from chapel, the one man of the whole world he esteemed
the greatest and the wisest. They had talked for three minutes and he
was at home with his deity, and yet had lost no tremor of the adoring
thrill.

'Good!' said Ralston. 'Dickens?' Paul's answer was nothing more than
an inarticulate gurgle of pleasure, neither a laugh nor an exclamation.
'Carlyle?' Paul was silent, and Ralston asked in a doubtful voice: 'Not
read Carlyle?'

'I'd go,' said Paul in a half whisper, 'from here to Chelsea on my hands
and knees to see him.'

'The best of magnets won't draw lead,' said Ralston, and at the time
Paul was puzzled by the phrase, but he blushed with pleasure when he
recalled it later on. 'And Browning?'

'Ugh!' said Paul.

'Ah, well, that's natural. But, mind you, Mr. Armstrong, in a year or
two you'll feel humiliated to think of your present position.'

They talked, marching up and down the platform, until the train came.

'You have been very kind, sir,' said Paul when at last the dreaded bell
rang and the distant engine screamed.

'Have I?' asked Ralston. 'Remember it as a debt you'll owe to some
aspiring youngster thirty years hence.'

The train came up before anything further was said. They shook hands and
parted.

Then for days and weeks Paul waited for a letter, waylaying the postman
every morning at the door. The letter came at last, brief and to the
point:

'Have read your poem. A bright promise--not yet an achievement. Command
of language more evident than individual thought. Be more yourself, but
go on in hope. Let nothing discourage. Remember that personal character
reveals itself in art Lofty conduct breeds the lofty ideal.'

The last phrase hit Paul hard. He was in search of the lofty ideal, and
if lofty conduct would bring it, he meant to have it.

He was