an, who lived the most correct of lives with
a girlish-looking wife in an ivy-covered cottage near Barnes Common,
I discovered to be the writer of decadent stories at which the Empress
Theodora might have blushed. The men whose names were widest known were
not the men who shone the brightest in Deleglise's kitchen; more
often they appeared the dull dogs, listening enviously, or failing
pathetically when they tried to compete with others who to the public
were comparatively unknown. After a time I ceased to confound the artist
with the man, thought no more of judging the one by the other than of
evolving a tenant from the house to which circumstances or carelessness
might have directed him. Clearly they were two creations originally
independent of each other, settling down into a working partnership
for purposes merely of mutual accommodation; the spirit evidently
indifferent as to the particular body into which he crept, anxious only
for a place to work in, easily contented.

Varied were these guests that gathered round old Deleglise's oak.
Cabinet Ministers reported to be in Homburg; Russian Nihilists escaped
from Siberia; Italian revolutionaries; high church dignitaries disguised
in grey suitings; ex-errand boys, who had discovered that with six
strokes of the pen they could set half London laughing at whom they
would; raw laddies with the burr yet clinging to their tongues, but
who we knew would one day have the people dancing to the music of their
words. Neither wealth, nor birth, nor age, nor position counted. Was a
man interesting, amusing; had he ideas and thoughts of his own? Then he
was welcome. Men who had come, men who were coming, met there on equal
footing. Among them, as years ago among my schoolmates, I found my
place--somewhat to my dissatisfaction. I amused. Much rather would I
have shocked them by the originality of my views, impressed them with
the depth of my judgments. They declined to be startled, refused to
be impressed; instead, they laughed. Nor from these men could I obtain
sympathy in my disappointment.

"What do you mean, you villain!" roared Deleglise's caretaker at me one
evening on entering the kitchen. "How dare you waste your time writing
this sort of stuff?"

He had a copy of the paper containing my "Witch of Moel Sarbod" in his
hand--then some months old. He screwed it up into a ball and flung it in
my face. "I've only just read it. What did you get for it?"

"Nothing," I answered.