him that three had been sold. I laughed, as at a
jest.

'You don't suppose I CARE, do you?' he said, with something like a
snarl. I disclaimed the notion. He added that he was not a tradesman. I
said mildly that I wasn't, either, and murmured that an artist who gave
truly new and great things to the world had always to wait long for
recognition. He said he cared not a sou for recognition. I agreed that
the act of creation was its own reward.

His moroseness might have alienated me if I had regarded myself as a
nobody. But ah! hadn't both John Lane and Aubrey Beardsley suggested
that I should write an essay for the great new venture that was
afoot--'The Yellow Book'? And hadn't Henry Harland, as editor, accepted
my essay? And wasn't it to be in the very first number? At Oxford I
was still in statu pupillari. In London I regarded myself as very much
indeed a graduate now--one whom no Soames could ruffle. Partly to show
off, partly in sheer good-will, I told Soames he ought to contribute to
'The Yellow Book.' He uttered from the throat a sound of scorn for that
publication.

Nevertheless, I did, a day or two later, tentatively ask Harland if he
knew anything of the work of a man called Enoch Soames. Harland paused
in the midst of his characteristic stride around the room, threw up his
hands towards the ceiling, and groaned aloud: he had often met 'that
absurd creature' in Paris, and this very morning had received some poems
in manuscript from him.

'Has he NO talent?' I asked.

'He has an income. He's all right.' Harland was the most joyous of men
and most generous of critics, and he hated to talk of anything about
which he couldn't be enthusiastic. So I dropped the subject of Soames.
The news that Soames had an income did take the edge off solicitude. I
learned afterwards that he was the son of an unsuccessful and deceased
bookseller in Preston, but had inherited an annuity of 300 pounds from
a married aunt, and had no surviving relatives of any kind. Materially,
then, he was 'all right.' But there was still a spiritual pathos about
him, sharpened for me now by the possibility that even the praises of
The Preston Telegraph might not have been forthcoming had he not been
the son of a Preston man. He had a sort of weak doggedness which I
could not but admire. Neither he nor his work received the slightest
encouragement; but he persisted in behaving as a personage: always
he kept his dingy little flag flying. Wherever