nd the Colonies; and that his
income rose into five figures. He couldn't help it. His business was a
thing that had passed beyond his control. With infinite exertions he had
set it spinning, and now it looked as if he had only to touch it now and
then with his finger to keep it going. And if he did get a bit excited is
it any wonder? There was the dreadful fascination of the thing that
compelled him to watch it till its perpetual gyrations went to his head
and made it reel.

His figure seems to me to reel slightly as it moves through those rooms
in the house in Green Street, and before the footlights as he answered
calls, and across the banquet-halls of the "Ritz" or the "Criterion" or
the "Savoy," when--about three times a year--he celebrated his triumphs.
I see those years as a succession of banquets running indistinguishably
into each other. I see him buying more and more furniture and
superintending its disposal with excitement. He seems to me to have been
always buying things. I've forgotten most of them except the things he
bought for Viola--the jewellery that frightened her, the opera cloak that
made her hysterical, the furs that had to be sent back again (you'd have
thought he couldn't have gone wrong with furs, but he did), and the hats
that even Jimmy owned it was impossible to wear. I can see his face
saddened by these failures and a little puzzled, as if he couldn't
conceive how his star should have gone back on him like that. I can see
him, and I can see Viola, kneeling on the floor in his study and packing
some beastly thing up in paper, tenderly, as if it had been the corpse of
a beloved hope; and I can hear him saying (it was after the opera cloak
and the hysterics), "Walter, you can monkey with a woman's 'eart, and you
can ruin her immortal soul, but if you meddle with her clothes it's hell
for both of you. Don't you do it, my boy."

I remember scores of little things like that, things done and things said
with an incorruptible sweetness and affection, but things accentuated
with lapsed aitches and with gestures that only Jimmy was unaware of.
Those years are marked for me more than anything by the awful increase
in his solecisms. Their number, their enormity and frequency rose with
his income, and for the best of reasons. It was as if, his object being
gained, he could afford them. He was no longer on his guard. He had no
longer any need to be. The strain was over--he relaxed, and in relaxation
he fel