o the simplest mind that by
the law of distribution of earthly boons such a convenience should be
expected to forfeit in duration what it displayed in intensity. He had
never been without a suspicion that Nash was too good to last, though
for that matter nothing had yet confirmed a vague apprehension that his
particular manner of breaking up or breaking down would be by his
wishing to put so fresh a recruit in relation with other disciples.

That would practically amount to a catastrophe, Nick felt; for it was
odd that one could both have a great kindness for him and not in the
least, when it came to the point, yearn for a view of his personal
extensions. His originality had always been that he appeared to have
none; and if in the first instance he had introduced his bright, young,
political prodigy to Miriam and her mother, that was an exception for
which Peter Sherringham's interference had been mainly responsible. All
the same, however, it was some time before Nick ceased to view it as
perhaps on the awkward books that, to complete his education as it were,
Gabriel would wish him to converse a little with spirits formed by a
like tonic discipline. Nick had an instinct, in which there was no
consciousness of detriment to Nash, that the pupils, possibly even the
imitators, of such a genius would be, as he mentally phrased it,
something awful. He could be sure, even Gabriel himself could be sure,
of his own reservations, but how could either of them be sure of those
of others? Imitation is a fortunate homage only in proportion as it
rests on measurements, and there was an indefinable something in Nash's
doctrine that would have been discredited by exaggeration or by zeal.
Providence happily appeared to have spared it this ordeal; so that Nick
had after months still to remind himself how his friend had never
pressed on his attention the least little group of fellow-mystics, never
offered to produce them for his edification. It scarcely mattered now
that he was just the man to whom the superficial would attribute that
sort of tail: it would probably have been hard, for example, to persuade
Lady Agnes or Julia Dallow or Peter Sherringham that he was not most at
home in some dusky, untidy, dimly-imagined suburb of "culture," a region
peopled by unpleasant phrasemongers who thought him a gentleman and who
had no human use but to be held up in the comic press--which was,
moreover, probably restrained by decorum from touching u