as in truth only now beginning to work. He was preparing
such a work ... such a work ... such a Mistress was a-making in the
gestation of his Art ... let him but get this period of probation and
poignant waiting over and men should see.... How _should_ men know her,
this Fair One of Oleron's, until Oleron himself knew her? Lovely radiant
creations are not thrown off like How-d'ye-do's. The men to whom it is
committed to father them must weep wretched tears, as Oleron did, must
swell with vain presumptuous hopes, as Oleron did, must pursue, as Oleron
pursued, the capricious, fair, mocking, slippery, eager Spirit that, ever
eluding, ever sees to it that the chase does not slacken. Let Oleron but
hunt this Huntress a little longer... he would have her sparkling
and panting in his arms yet.... Oh no: they were very far from the truth
who supposed that Oleron had ceased to work!

And if all else was falling away from Oleron, gladly he was letting it
go. So do we all when our Fair Ones beckon. Quite at the beginning we
wink, and promise ourselves that we will put Her Ladyship through her
paces, neglect her for a day, turn her own jealous wiles against her,
flout and ignore her when she comes wheedling; perhaps there lurks within
us all the time a heartless sprite who is never fooled; but in the end
all falls away. She beckons, beckons, and all goes....

And so Oleron kept his strategic post within the frame of his bedroom
door, and watched, and waited, and smiled, with his finger on his
lips.... It was his duteous service, his worship, his troth-plighting,
all that he had ever known of Love. And when he found himself, as he now
and then did, hating the dead man Madley, and wishing that he had never
lived, he felt that that, too, was an acceptable service....

But, as he thus prepared himself, as it were, for a Marriage, and moped
and chafed more and more that the Bride made no sign, he made a discovery
that he ought to have made weeks before.

It was through a thought of the dead Madley that he made it. Since that
night when he had thought in his greenness that a little studied neglect
would bring the lovely Beckoner to her knees, and had made use of her own
jealousy to banish her, he had not set eyes on those fifteen discarded
chapters of _Romilly_. He had thrown them back into the window-seat,
forgotten their very existence. But his own jealousy of Madley put him in
mind of hers of her jilted rival of flesh and blood, and