well," she mused, "we must assume that he has happy moments--or,
perhaps, two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his
manuscripts when he's writing. You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.
That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend. But you
pique my interest. What is the trouble with him? Is--is he conceited,
for example?"

"The trouble with him?" Peter pondered. "Oh, it would be too long and
too sad a story. Should I anatomise him to you as he is, I must blush
and weep, and you must look pale and wonder. He has pretty nearly
every weakness, not to mention vices, that flesh is heir to. But as for
conceit... let me see. He concurs in my own high opinion of his work, I
believe; but I don't know whether, as literary men go, it would be fair
to call him conceited. He belongs, at any rate, to the comparatively
modest minority who do not secretly fancy that Shakespeare has come back
to life."

"That Shakespeare has come back to life!" marvelled the Duchessa. "Do
you mean to say that most literary men fancy that?"

"I think perhaps I am acquainted with three who don't," Peter replied;
"but one of them merely wears his rue with a difference. He fancies that
it's Goethe."

"How extravagantly--how exquisitely droll!" she laughed.

"I confess, it struck me so, until I got accustomed to it," said he,
"until I learned that it was one of the commonplaces, one of the normal
attributes of the literary temperament. It's as much to be taken
for granted, when you meet an author, as the tail is to be taken for
granted, when you meet a cat."

"I'm vastly your debtor for the information--it will stand me in stead
with the next author who comes my way. But, in that case, your friend
Mr. Felix Wildmay will be, as it were, a sort of Manx cat?" was her
smiling deduction.

"Yes, if you like, in that particular, a sort of Manx cat," acquiesced
Peter, with a laugh.

The Duchessa laughed too; and then there was a little pause.

Overhead, never so light a breeze lisped never so faintly in the
tree-tops; here and there bird-notes fell, liquid, desultory, like drops
of rain after a shower; and constantly one heard the cool music of the
river. The sun, filtering through worlds and worlds of leaves, shed upon
everything a green-gold penumbra. The air, warm and still, was sweet
with garden-scents. The lake, according to its habit at this hour of
the afternoon, had drawn a grey veil over its face, a thin grey ve