estibule until the
others are ready to go home. In the meantime you can tell me all the
particulars you care to trust me with. Marian will tell me the rest when
we go home."

"That is an undeserved stab," said Conolly.

"Never mind: I am always stabbing people. I suppose I like it," she
added, as they went together to the vestibule.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Leith Fairfax had not been wasting her time. She had
come upon Douglas in the large room, and had recognized him by his
stature and proud bearing, in spite of the handsome Assyrian beard he
had allowed to grow during his stay abroad.

"I have been very anxious to see you," said she, forcing a conversation
upon him, though he had saluted her formally, and had evidently intended
to pass on without speaking. "If your time were not too valuable to be
devoted to a poor hard-working woman, I should have asked you to call on
me. Dont deprecate my forbearance. You are Somebody in the literary
world now."

"Indeed? I was not aware that I had done anything to raise me from
obscurity."

"I assure you you are very much mistaken, or else very modest. Has no
one told you about the effect your book produced here?"

"I know nothing of it, Mrs. Leith Fairfax. I never enquire after the
effect of my work. I have lived in comparative seclusion; and I scarcely
know what collection of fugitive notes of mine you honor by describing
as a book."

"I mean your 'Note on three pictures in last year's _Salon_,' with the
sonnets, and the fragment from your unfinished drama. Is it finished,
may I ask?"

"It is not finished. I shall never finish it now."

"I will tell you--between ourselves--that I heard one of the foremost
critics of the age say, in the presence of a great poet (whom we both
know), that it was such another fragment as the Venus of Milo, 'whose
lost arms,' said he, 'we should fear to see, lest they should be
unworthy of her.' 'You are right,' said the poet: 'I, for one, should
shudder to see the fragment completed.' That is a positive fact. But
look at some of the sonnets! Burgraves says that his collection of
English sonnets is incomplete because it does not contain your
'Clytemnestra,' which he had not seen when his book went to press. You
stand in the very forefront of literature--far higher than I, who
am--dont tell anybody--five years older than you."

"You are very good. I do not value any distinction of the sort. I write
sometimes because, I suppose, the things that a