ness of which in late
years he felt compelled to screen under his pseudonym.

That William Sharp's affirmation of an actual living and breathing
"Fiona Macleod" was, however, virtually true is confided by this
significant and illuminating passage in Mrs. Sharp's biography. Mrs.
Sharp is speaking of a sojourn together in Rome during the spring of
1891, in which her husband had experienced an unusual exaltation and
exuberance of vital and creative energy.

There, at last [she says], he had found the desired incentive
towards a true expression of himself, in the stimulus and
sympathetic understanding of the friend to whom he dedicated the
first of the books published under his pseudonym. This friendship
began in Rome and lasted throughout the remainder of his life. And
though this new phase of his work was at no time the result of
collaboration, as certain of his critics have suggested, he was
deeply conscious of his indebtedness to this friend, for--as he
stated to me in a letter of instructions, written before he went to
America in 1896, concerning his wishes in the event of his death--he
realized that it was "to her I owe my development as 'Fiona
Macleod,' though in a sense of course that began long before I
knew her, and indeed while I was still a child," and that, as he
believed, "without her there would have been no 'Fiona Macleod.'"
Because of her beauty, her strong sense of life and of the joy of
life; because of her keen intuitions and mental alertness, her
personality stood for him as a symbol of the heroic women of Greek
and Celtic days, a symbol that, as he expressed it, unlocked new
doors in his mind and put him "in touch with ancestral memories" of
his race. So, for a time, he stilled the critical, intellectual mood
of William Sharp, to give play to the development of this new-found
expression of subtle emotions, towards which he had been moving with
all the ardour of his nature.

From this statement of Mrs. Sharp one naturally turns to the dedication
of _Pharais_ to which she refers, finding a dedicatory letter
to "E.W.R." dealing for the most part with "Celtic" matters, but
containing these more personal passages:

Dear friend [the letter begins], while you gratify me by your
pleasure in this inscription, you modestly deprecate the dedication
to you of this study of alien life--of that unfamiliar isla