great feast for _me_!"

"Of course it is, cruel youth. But to show you I'm still not incapable,
degraded as I am, of an act of faith, I'll tie my vanity to the stake for
you and burn it to ashes. You must come and see me--you must come and
see us," the Master quickly substituted. "Mrs. St. George is charming; I
don't know whether you've had any opportunity to talk with her. She'll
be delighted to see you; she likes great celebrities, whether incipient
or predominant. You must come and dine--my wife will write to you. Where
are you to be found?"

"This is my little address"--and Overt drew out his pocketbook and
extracted a visiting-card. On second thoughts, however, he kept it back,
remarking that he wouldn't trouble his friend to take charge of it but
would come and see him straightway in London and leave it at his door if
he should fail to obtain entrance.

"Ah you'll probably fail; my wife's always out--or when she isn't out is
knocked up from having been out. You must come and dine--though that
won't do much good either, for my wife insists on big dinners." St.
George turned it over further, but then went on: "You must come down and
see us in the country, that's the best way; we've plenty of room, and it
isn't bad."

"You've a house in the country?" Paul asked enviously.

"Ah not like this! But we have a sort of place we go to--an hour from
Euston. That's one of the reasons."

"One of the reasons?"

"Why my books are so bad."

"You must tell me all the others!" Paul longingly laughed.

His friend made no direct rejoinder to this, but spoke again abruptly.
"Why have I never seen you before?"

The tone of the question was singularly flattering to our hero, who felt
it to imply the great man's now perceiving he had for years missed
something. "Partly, I suppose, because there has been no particular
reason why you should see me. I haven't lived in the world--in your
world. I've spent many years out of England, in different places
abroad."

"Well, please don't do it any more. You must do England--there's such a
lot of it."

"Do you mean I must write about it?" and Paul struck the note of the
listening candour of a child.

"Of course you must. And tremendously well, do you mind? That takes off
a little of my esteem for this thing of yours--that it goes on abroad.
Hang 'abroad!' Stay at home and do things here--do subjects we can
measure."

"I'll do whatever you tell me," Overt said, de