priest in the
confessional. He acquired an infinite amount of information, but it
didn't do him any good. She is so witty that every one invites her
everywhere in spite of her reputation, and he is left to dine alone at
the Meurice. Dull men simply are not tolerated in Paris.

"It was at Blanche's last year that I met George Moore," I continued.
"You know I have just seen him in London. He is at work on _The
Apostle_, making a novel of it, to be called 'The Brook Kerith.'...
For a time he thought of finishing it up as a play because a novel
meant a visit to Palestine and that was distasteful to him, but it
finally became a novel. He went to Palestine and stayed six weeks,
just long enough to find a monastery and to study the lay of the
country. For he says, truly enough, that one cannot imagine
landscapes; one does not know whether there is a high or low horizon.
There may be a brook which all the characters must cross. It is
necessary to see these things. Besides he had to find a monastery....
He told me of his thrill when he discovered an order of monks living
on a narrow ledge of cliff, with 500 feet sheer rise and descent above
and below it ... and when he had found this his work was done and he
returned to England to write the book, a reaction, for he told me that
he was getting tired of being personal in literature. The book will
exhibit a conflict between two types: Christ, the disappointed mystic,
and Paul; Christ, who sees that there is no good to be served in
saving the world by his death, and Paul, full of hope, idealism, and
illusions. It is the drama of the conflict between the nature which is
affected by externals and that which is not, he told me."

"It's a subject for Anatole France," said Sitgreaves. "Moore, in my
opinion, is not a novelist. His great achievements are his memoirs. I
was interested in 'Evelyn Innes' and 'Esther Waters,' but something
was lacking. There is nothing lacking in the three volumes of 'Hail
and Farewell.' They grow in interest. Moore has found his _metier_."

"But he insists," I explained, before the door of the little hotel,
"that 'Hail and Farewell' is a novel. He is infuriated when some one
suggests that it is a book after the manner of, say, 'The
Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill.'..."

We entered and walked up the little staircase.

"Do you mean that the incidents are untrue?"

We were at the door of the _concierge_ and there stood Marcel, his
apron spread n