y what was in his mind: "It is rather strange," he said, "to be
pushed aside like this, and to have to reconsider one's theories. I did
not expect to have to pull up--the path lay plain before me--and now it
seems to me as if there were a good many things I had lost sight of.
Well, one must take things as they come, and I don't think that if I
had it all to do again I should do otherwise." He changed the subject
rather hurriedly, and began to talk about my work. "You are quite a
great man now," he said with a smile; "I hear your books talked about
wherever I go--I used to wonder if you would have had the patience to
do anything--you were hampered by having no need to earn your living;
but you have come out on the top." I told him something about my own
late experiences and my difficulty in writing. He listened with
undisguised interest. "What do you make of it?" he said. "Well," I
said; "you will think I am talking transcendentally, but I have felt
often of late as if there were two strains in our life, two kinds of
experience; at one time we have to do our work with all our might, to
get absorbed in it, to do what little we can to enrich the world; and
then at another time it is all knocked out of our hands, and we have to
sit and meditate--to realise that we are here on sufferance, that what
we can do matters very little to any one--the same sort of feeling that
I once had when old Hoskyns, in whose class I was, threw an essay, over
which I had taken a lot of trouble, into his waste-paper basket before
my eyes without even looking it over. I see now that I had got all the
good I could out of the essay by writing it, and that the credit of it
mattered very little; but then I simply thought he was a very
disagreeable and idle old fellow."

"Yes," he said, smiling, "there is something in that; but one wants the
marks as well--I have always liked to be marked for my work. I am glad
you told me that story, old man."

We went on to talk of other things, and when I rose to go, he thanked
me rather effusively for my kindness in coming to see him. He told me
that he was shortly going abroad, and that if I could find time to
write he would be grateful for a letter; "and when I am on my legs
again," he said with a smile, "we will have another meeting."

That was all that passed between us of actual speech. Yet how much more
seems to have been implied than was said. I knew, as well as if he had
told me in so many words, that he