photograph was as true and straightforward as the picture proclaimed her
to be, Barry put down the frame again, and began, whistling, to prepare
for bed.

CHAPTER III

A month later Barry relinquished his post as secretary to the man he
called "old Joliffe," and announced himself to be from henceforth at
Owen's disposal.

The review to which the latter had alluded was a long-standing ideal of
Owen Rose's. From his earliest youth he had been attracted by the
journalistic side of life, and seeing no means of editing a London daily
at an early age, he had wisely determined to learn the whole business of
newspaper journalism from the beginning. At the ago of eighteen he was
sub-editor on a big provincial daily; but his brilliant and versatile
intelligence soon wearied of the monotony of the life, and he came to
London to demand the right of admittance into Fleet Street.

At that time, luckily for himself, he was on terms of friendship with a
well-known editor; and what his own talent might have found difficulty
in obtaining was placed unexpectedly within his reach. Before he was
twenty-five he was well-known in the newspaper world; and since, on his
twenty-fifth birthday, he came into possession of the comfortable income
left to him by his father many years before, he was able to turn his
back definitely on any soul-destroying drudgery and devote his time and
brains to better work. Beneath his journalistic ability there was a
sound and delicate literary _flair_; and it had long been his dream to
found a magazine which, while neither commonplace nor unduly "precious,"
should hit a happy mean between the cheap magazines devoted to more or
less poor fiction, and the somewhat pompous reviews which held up the
light of learning and research in a rather severe and forbidding
fashion.

He would have a little fiction--of the highest order. A comparatively
large portion of the review was to be devoted to poetry, both as
regarded original verse and the critical appreciation of modern poetry
as a whole. Articles on art, music, the drama, were all to find a home
in his pages; and there was to be a judicious sprinkling of science to
add a little ballast to the lighter freight.

But what he intended to be the striking feature of the review was the
tone which was to prevail throughout. It was to be warm, eager,
enthusiastic, optimistic. He intended himself to write a series of
articles dealing with the future in relation