ened my melancholy.
While tea was being prepared Monica showed me the garden. Only
a few daffodils and crocuses were in bloom, but she led me to the
rose garden, and told me that in the summer she could pick a great
basket of roses every day. I pictured Monica to myself, gathering
her roses on a breathless summer afternoon, and returned to the
house feeling like a battened version of the Reverend Laurence
Sterne. I knew that I had gathered all my roses, and I thought
regretfully of the chill loneliness of the world that lay beyond the
limits of this paradise.

This mood lingered with me during tea, and it was not till that
meal was over that the miracle happened. I do not know whether it
was the Englishman or his wife that wrought the magic: or perhaps
it was Monica, nibbling "speculations" with her sharp white teeth;
but at all events I was led with delicate diplomacy to talk about
myself, and I presently realised that I was performing the
grateful labour really well. My words were warmed into life by an
eloquence that is not ordinarily mine, my adjectives were neither
commonplace nor far-fetched, my adverbs fell into their sockets
with a sob of joy. I spoke of myself with a noble sympathy, a
compassion so intense that it seemed divinely altruistic. And
gradually, as the spirit of creation woke in my blood, I revealed,
trembling between a natural sensitiveness and a generous
abandonment of restraint, the inner life of a man of genius.

I passed lightly by his misunderstood childhood to concentrate my
sympathies on the literary struggles of his youth. I spoke of the
ignoble environment, the material hardships, the masterpieces written
at night to be condemned in the morning, the songs of his heart that
were too great for his immature voice to sing; and all the while I
bade them watch the fire of his faith burning with a constant and
quenchless flame. I traced the development of his powers, and
instanced some of his poems, my poems, which I recited so well that
they sounded to me, and I swear to them also, like staves from an
angelic hymn-book. I asked their compassion for the man who, having
such things in his heart, was compelled to waste his hours in sordid
journalistic labours.

So by degrees I brought them to the present time, when, fatigued by
a world that would not acknowledge the truth of his message,
the man of genius was preparing to retire from life, in order to
devote himself to the composition of five o