une in a
week?"

This nearly took my breath away.

"My dear du Maurier," I replied, "I feel hurt--seriously, irrevocably.
I shall always feel degraded in your eyes. Of course you are the victim
of a practical joke."

Du Maurier pulled from his pocket one of my supposed returns. It was an
imitation of printing, with the amounts filled in. "This is the kind of
thing I get every morning."

"Why, of course, it is written, not printed. That is the work of the
irrepressible practical joker. But it makes no difference, du Maurier;
if you thought that I would be such a cad as to send you these returns,
I cannot see how we can ever be great friends."

Although as du Maurier believed for a time I had the necessary vulgarity
of the "bloated millionaire," to use his own words, we were never much
more than acquaintances--although very pleasant acquaintances--and I
believe du Maurier reciprocated the kind feeling I had towards him. Du
Maurier rarely forgave a satirical thrust at his expense. His dislike
for Mr. Whistler on this account is well known to all the early readers
of "Trilby," and he often related with unconcealed glee a remark he once
made to Whistler. It appears they had not met for a long period, during
which du Maurier with his satirical pictures on the aesthetic craze,
published in _Punch_, and Whistler with his "symphonies" and "harmonies"
on canvas, exhibited in the Law Courts, had both increased their
reputation.

"Hullo, Kiki!" cried Whistler. "I'm told that your work in _Punch_ is
the making of some men. You have actually invented Tomkins! Why, he
never would have existed but for you! Ha! ha! how on earth did you do
it?"

"Look here, Jimmy, if you don't look out, by Jove, I'll invent you!"

How Kiki--du Maurier--carried out his threat in "Trilby," and what
resulted from it, all the world knows.

By the way, the mention of "Trilby" reminds me of a story about Mr. du
Maurier's own Trilby which is perhaps worth recording. Du Maurier for
some years lived on the top of Hampstead Heath, rather inaccessible for
models. But more than once friends asked him to take a sitting from some
lady or another, as he, drawing fashionable ladies, was different,
perhaps, from painters using models for costumes or, as du Maurier
would say, for the "altogether." In this way a model was introduced to
him, and, to his surprise, she drove up to his house in a hansom, and he
heard her asking one of the servants for change of a s