o one seeing the two rivals together, no one meeting them at Mr.
Hookworth's famous luncheon parties in the Authors' Club, or at Mrs.
Foster-Dugdale's not less famous garden parties in Greville Place,
would have supposed off-hand that the pair had a single point in common.
Dapper little Maltby--blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with his monocle
and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair and his square
blue jaw and his square sallow forehead. Canary and crow. Maltby had a
perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk. Braxton was usually silent, but
very well worth listening to whenever he did croak. He had distinction,
I admit it; the distinction of one who steadfastly refuses to adapt
himself to surroundings. He stood out. He awed Mr. Hookworth. Ladies
were always asking one another, rather intently, what they thought of
him. One could imagine that Mr. Foster-Dugdale, had he come home from
the City to attend the garden parties, might have regarded him as
one from whom Mrs. Foster-Dugdale should be shielded. But the casual
observer of Braxton and Maltby at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale's or elsewhere was
wrong in supposing that the two were totally unlike. He overlooked one
simple and obvious point. This was that he had met them both at Mrs.
Foster-Dugdale's or elsewhere. Wherever they were invited, there
certainly, there punctually, they would be. They were both of them
gluttons for the fruits and signs of their success.

Interviewers and photographers had as little reason as had hostesses to
complain of two men so earnestly and assiduously 'on the make' as Maltby
and Braxton. Maltby, for all his sparkle, was earnest; Braxton, for all
his arrogance, assiduous.

'A Faun on the Cotswolds' had no more eager eulogist than the author of
'Ariel in Mayfair.' When any one praised his work, Maltby would lightly
disparage it in comparison with Braxton's--'Ah, if I could write like
THAT!' Maltby won golden opinions in this way. Braxton, on the
other hand, would let slip no opportunity for sneering at Maltby's
work--'gimcrack,' as he called it. This was not good for Maltby.
Different men, different methods.

'The Rape of the Lock' was 'gimcrack,' if you care to call it so; but it
was a delicate, brilliant work; and so, I repeat, was Maltby's 'Ariel.'
Absurd to compare Maltby with Pope? I am not so sure. I have read
'Ariel,' but have never read 'The Rape of the Lock.' Braxton's
opprobrious term for 'Ariel' may not, however, have bee