istaken. Then he
sat down beside the open window, where a fine rain came
in and smote upon the page, and read it through, straining
his eyes in the gathering darkness over the last paragraph.
After that he walked up and down the room among the
shadows for half an hour, not ringing for lights, because
the scented darkness of the garden, where the rain was
dripping, and the half outlines of the things in the room
were so much more grateful to his imagination as the
_Decade's_ critic had stimulated it with the young,
mocking, brilliant voice that spoke in the department of
"Fine Arts." It stirred him all through. In the pleasure
it gave him he refused to reflect how often it dismissed
with contempt where it should have considered with respect,
how it was sometimes inconsistent, sometimes exaggerated
and obscure. He was rapt in the delicacy and truth with
which the critic translated into words the recognizable
souls of a certain few pictures--it could not displease
him that they were very few, since three of his were
among them. When it spoke of these the voice was strong
and gentle, with an uplifted tenderness, and all the
suppressed suggestion that good pictures themselves have.
It made their quality felt in the lines, and it spoke
with a personal joy.

"A new note!" Kendal thought aloud. "A voice crying in
the wilderness, by Jove! Wolff might have done it if it
had been in French, but Wolff would have been fairer and
more technical and less sympathetic."

A fine energy crept all through him and burned at his
finger-ends. The desire to work seized him deliciously
with the thrill of being understood, a longing to accomplish
to the utmost of his limitations--he must reasonably
suppose his limitations. Sometimes they were close and
real; at this moment they were far off and vague, and
almost dissolved by the force of his joyous intention.
He threw himself mentally upon half-finished canvas that
stood against the wall in Bryanston Street, and spent
ten exalted minutes in finishing it. When it was done he
found it ravishing, and raged because he could not decently
leave for town before four o'clock next day. He worked
off the time before dinner by putting his things together,
and the amiable people had never found him so delightful
as he was that evening. After amusing one of the robust
young ladies for half an hour at prodigious cost, he
found himself comparing their conversation with the talk
he might have had in t