gle, and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any
movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. "What a period!" he
uttered, laying the book down. And, "What a country!" he added.

I asked rather nervously if he didn't think Keats had more or less held
his own against the drawbacks of time and place. He admitted that
there were "passages in Keats," but did not specify them. Of "the
older men," as he called them, he seemed to like only Milton.
"Milton," he said, "wasn't sentimental." Also, "Milton had a dark
insight." And again, "I can always read Milton in the reading-room."

"The reading-room?"

"Of the British Museum. I go there every day."

"You do? I've only been there once. I'm afraid I found it rather a
depressing place. It--it seemed to sap one's vitality."

"It does. That's why I go there. The lower one's vitality, the more
sensitive one is to great art. I live near the museum. I have rooms
in Dyott Street."

"And you go round to the reading-room to read Milton?"

"Usually Milton." He looked at me. "It was Milton," he
certificatively added, "who converted me to diabolism."

"Diabolism? Oh, yes? Really?" said I, with that vague discomfort and
that intense desire to be polite which one feels when a man speaks of
his own religion. "You--worship the devil?"

Soames shook his head.

"It's not exactly worship," he qualified, sipping his absinthe. "It's
more a matter of trusting and encouraging."

"I see, yes. I had rather gathered from the preface to 'Negations'
that you were a--a Catholic."

"Je l'etais a cette epoque. In fact, I still am. I am a Catholic
diabolist."

But this profession he made in an almost cursory tone. I could see
that what was upmost in his mind was the fact that I had read
"Negations." His pale eyes had for the first time gleamed. I felt as
one who is about to be examined viva voce on the very subject in which
he is shakiest. I hastily asked him how soon his poems were to be
published.

"Next week," he told me.

"And are they to be published without a title?"

"No. I found a title at last. But I sha'n't tell you what it is," as
though I had been so impertinent as to inquire. "I am not sure that it
wholly satisfies me. But it is the best I can find. It suggests
something of the quality of the poems--strange growths, natural and
wild, yet exquisite," he added, "and many-hued, and full of poisons."

I asked him what he thought of