y, of course!--wants a page of the first lecture. Calm!
Invitations from the Scottish Athenaeum--the Newcastle Academy--the
Birmingham Literary Guild--the Glasgow Poetic Society--the 'British
Philosophers'--the Dublin Dilettanti!--Heavens!--how many more! None of
them offering cash, as far as I can see--only fame--pure and undefiled!
Hullo!--that's a compliment!--the Parnassians have put me on their
Council. And last year, I was told, I couldn't even get in as an
ordinary member. Dash their impudence!... This is really astounding!
What are yours, darling?"

And tumbling all his opened letters on the sofa, Arthur Meadows rose--in
sheer excitement--and confronted his wife, with a flushed countenance.
He was a tall, broadly built, loose-limbed fellow, with a fine shaggy
head, whereof various black locks were apt to fall forward over his
eyes, needing to be constantly thrown back by a picturesque action of
the hand. The features were large and regular, the complexion dark, the
eyes a pale blue, under bushy brows. The whole aspect of the man,
indeed, was not unworthy of the adjective "Olympian," already freely
applied to it by some of the enthusiastic women students attending his
now famous lectures. One girl artist learned in classical archaeology,
and a haunter of the British Museum, had made a charcoal study of a
well-known archaistic "Diespiter" of the Augustan period, on the same
sheet with a rapid sketch of Meadows when lecturing; a performance which
had been much handed about in the lecture-room, though always just
avoiding--strangely enough--the eyes of the lecturer.... The expression
of slumbrous power, the mingling of dream and energy in the Olympian
countenance, had been, in the opinion of the majority, extremely well
caught. Only Doris Meadows, the lecturer's wife, herself an artist, and
a much better one than the author of the drawing, had smiled a little
queerly on being allowed a sight of it.

However, she was no less excited by the batch of letters her husband had
allowed her to open than he by his. Her bundle included, so it appeared,
letters from several leading politicians: one, discussing in a most
animated and friendly tone the lecture of the week before, on "Lord
George Bentinck"; and two others dealing with the first lecture of the
series, the brilliant pen-portrait of Disraeli, which--partly owing to
feminine influence behind the scenes--had been given _verbatim_ and with
much preliminary trumpeting