f patronage about this--nothing but real kindness. But they feel that
they are in possession of the higher and more beautiful life, and I
have no sort of doubt that they believe I regard their paradise with
envy; that I would live the same life if I had the means. I fully admit
that I am not nearly so perfectly equipped with culture as my friends.
I have not got a quarter of their stock or of their experience; but yet
I am as absolutely sure that I, with all my deficiencies and
ignorances, negligences, incompletenesses, am inside the sacred circle
of art, as I am certain that they are without it. To me beauty is a
holy and bewildering passion; a divine spirit, that sometimes heaps
treasures upon me with both hands, and sometimes denies the least hint
of her influence. But they, I feel, mistake craftsmanship and
accomplishment and technique for the inner spirit of art; they have
never felt the awful rapture, the overwhelming impulse. And thus, as I
say, I return with a sense of weary gratitude to my lonely house with
its austere rooms; to my old piano, my old books; to my wide fields and
leafless trees, as of one returning home to worship at a quiet shrine,
after being compelled to play a part in a pageant which is not
concerned with the things of the soul.

XLIII

It must have been just about a year ago to-day that I received one
morning a letter from an old acquaintance of mine, Henry Gregory by
name, telling me that he was staying in my neighbourhood--might he
come over to see me? I asked him to come to luncheon.

I do not remember how I first came to know Gregory, but I was
instrumental in once getting him a little legal work to do, since when
he has shown a dangerous disposition to require similar services of me,
and even to confide in me. I am quite incapable--not on principle, but
from a sort of feeble courtesy--of rejecting such overtures. It does
more harm than good, because I am unable to help him in any way; and
the result of our talks is only to send him away disappointed and
annoyed, and to leave me both bored and compassionate, with that wholly
ineffectual compassion which is a mere morbid sentiment. Judge between
him and me! I will tell the whole story.

Gregory is a man of real ability, conscientious, clear-headed,
accurate. He was one of a large family; his father a country solicitor,
I think. He was at a public school and at the University; he has a
small income of his own, perhaps L150 a ye