would cry; 'all the great minds of to-day in other
countries, and some of the best in England; condemn me at your peril:
you will only condemn yourselves. You are spitting against the wind and
the shame will be on your own faces.'

"Do you believe I should be left to suffer? I doubt it even in England
to-day. If I'm right, and I'm sure I'm right, then about me there would
be an invisible cloud of witnesses. You would see a strange movement of
opinion in my favour. The judge would probably lecture me and bind me
over to come up for judgment; but if he sentenced me vindictively then
the Home Secretary[32] would be petitioned and the movement in my favour
would grow, till it swept away opposition. This is the very soul of my
faith. If I did not believe with every fibre in me that this poor stupid
world is honestly groping its way up the altar stairs to God, and not
down, I would not live in it an hour."

"Why do you argue against me, Frank? It is brutal of you."

"To induce you even now to turn and pull yourself out of the mud. You
are forty odd years of age, and the keenest sensations of life are over
for you. Turn back whilst there's time, get to work, write your ballad
and your plays, and not the Alexanders alone, but all the people who
really count, the best of all countries--the salt of the earth--will
give you another chance. Begin to work and you'll be borne up on all
hands: No one sinks to the dregs but by his own weight. If you don't
bear fruit why should men care for you?"

He shrugged his shoulders and turned from me with disdainful
indifference.

"I've done enough for their respect, Frank, and received nothing but
hatred. Every man must dree his own weird. Thank Heaven, life's not
without compensations. I'm sorry I cannot please you," and he added
carelessly, "M----has asked me to go and spend the summer with him at
Gland in Switzerland. _He_ does not mind whether I write or not."

"I assure you," I cried, "it is not my pleasure I am thinking about.
What can it matter to me whether you write or not? It is your own good I
am thinking of."

"Oh, bother good! One's friends like one as one is; the outside public
hate one or scoff at one as they please."

"Well, I hope I shall always be your friend," I replied, "but you will
yet be forced to see, Oscar, that everyone grows tired of holding up an
empty sack."

"Frank, you insult me."

"I don't mean to; I'm sorry; I shall never be so brutally frank again;