feet half linger.' It is but
a few steps from the railway-station in Putney High Street to No. 2.
The Pines. I had expected a greater distance to the sanctuary--a walk
in which to compose my mind and prepare myself for initiation. I laid
my hand irresolutely against the gate of the bleak trim front-garden, I
withdrew my hand, I went away. Out here were all the aspects of common
modern life. In there was Swinburne. A butcher-boy went by, whistling.
He was not going to see Swinburne. He could afford to whistle. I pursued
my dilatory course up the slope of Putney, but at length it occurred
to me that unpunctuality would after all be an imperfect expression of
reverence, and I retraced my footsteps.

No. 2--prosaic inscription! But as that front-door closed behind me I
had the instant sense of having slipped away from the harsh light of the
ordinary and contemporary into the dimness of an odd, august past. Here,
in this dark hall, the past was the present. Here loomed vivid and vital
on the walls those women of Rossetti whom I had known but as shades.
Familiar to me in small reproductions by photogravure, here they
themselves were, life-sized, 'with curled-up lips and amorous hair' done
in the original warm crayon, all of them intently looking down on me
while I took off my overcoat--all wondering who was this intruder
from posterity. That they hung in the hall, evidently no more than an
overflow, was an earnest of packed plenitude within. The room I was
ushered into was a back-room, a dining-room, looking on to a good
garden. It was, in form and 'fixtures,' an inalienably Mid-Victorian
room, and held its stolid own in the riot of Rossettis. Its proportions,
its window-sash bisecting the view of garden, its folding-doors (through
which I heard the voice of Watts-Dunton booming mysteriously in the
front room), its mantel-piece, its gas-brackets, all proclaimed that
nothing ever would seduce them from their allegiance to Martin Tupper.
'Nor me from mine,' said the sturdy cruet-stand on the long expanse
of table-cloth. The voice of Watts-Dunton ceased suddenly, and a few
moments later its owner appeared. He had been dictating, he explained.
'A great deal of work on hand just now--a great deal of work.'... I
remember that on my subsequent visits he was always, at the moment of
my arrival, dictating, and always greeted me with that phrase, 'A great
deal of work on hand just now.' I used to wonder what work it was, for
he publish