they began at that moment so to multiply.
A belated guest or two more came in, and I wish I could for my modesty's
sake refer to this circumstance alone the fact that nothing more of the
occasion survives for me save the intense but restricted glow of certain
instants, in another room, to which we had adjourned for smoking and
where my alarmed sense of the Bard's restriction to giving what he had
as a bard only became under a single turn of his hand a vision of quite
general munificence. Incredibly, inconceivably, he had _read_--and not
only read but admired, and not only admired but understandingly
referred; referred, time and some accident aiding, the appreciated
object, a short tale I had lately put forth, to its actually present
author, who could scarce believe his ears on hearing the thing
superlatively commended; pronounced, that is, by the illustrious
speaker, more to his taste than no matter what other like attempt.
Nothing would induce me to disclose the title of the piece, which has
little to do with the matter; my point is but in its having on the spot
been matter of pure romance to me that I was there and positively so
addressed. For it was a solution, the happiest in the world, and from
which I at once extracted enormities of pleasure: my relation to
whatever had bewildered me simply became perfect: the author of In
Memoriam had "liked" my own twenty pages, and his doing so was a gage of
his grace in which I felt I should rest forever--in which I have in fact
rested to this hour. My own basis of liking--such a blessed supersession
of all worryings and wonderings!--was accordingly established, and has
met every demand made of it.

Greatest was to have been, I dare say, the demand to which I felt it
exposed by the drive over to Aldworth with Mrs. Greville which I noted
above and which took place, if I am not mistaken, on the morrow of our
drive to Witley. A different shade of confidence and comfort, I make
out, accompanied this experiment: I believed more, for reasons I shall
not now attempt to recover, in the furthermost maintenance of our flying
bridge, the final piers of which, it was indubitable, _had_ at Witley
given way. What could have been moreover less like G. H. Lewes's
valedictory hurl back upon us of the printed appeal in which I was
primarily concerned than that so recent and so directly opposed passage
of the Eaton Place smoking-room, thanks to which I could nurse a
certified security all along