gs which to people of imagination generally hover over
the close of human histories. This romance at any rate is bracketed by
her early and her late appeal; and when its melancholy protrusions had
caught the declining light again from my half-hour's talk with her I
took a private vow to recover while that light still lingers something
of the delicate flush, to pick out with a brief patience the perplexing
lesson.

It was wonderful to observe how for herself Mrs. Highmore had already
done so: she wouldn't have hesitated to announce to me what was the
matter with Ralph Limbert, or at all events to give me a glimpse of the
high admonition she had read in his career. There could have been no
better proof of the vividness of this parable, which we were really in
our pleasant sympathy quite at one about, than that Mrs. Highmore, of
all hardened sinners, should have been converted. This indeed was not
news to me: she impressed upon me that for the last ten years she had
wanted to do something artistic, something as to which she was prepared
not to care a rap whether or no it should sell. She brought home to me
further that it had been mainly seeing what her brother-in-law did and
how he did it that had wedded her to this perversity. As _he_ didn't
sell, dear soul, and as several persons, of whom I was one, thought
highly of that, the fancy had taken her--taken her even quite early
in her prolific course--of reaching, if only once, the same heroic
eminence. She yearned to be, like Lim-bert, but of course only once, an
exquisite failure. There was something a failure was, a failure in the
market, that a success somehow wasn't. A success was as prosaic as a
good dinner: there was nothing more to be said about it than that you
had had it. Who but vulgar people, in such a case, made gloating remarks
about the courses? It was often by such vulgar people that a success was
attested. It made if you came to look at it nothing but money; that
is it made so much that any other result showed small in comparison. A
failure now could make--oh, with the aid of immense talent of course,
for there were failures and failures--such a reputation! She did me
the honour--she had often done it--to intimate that what she meant by
reputation was seeing _me_ toss a flower. If it took a failure to catch
a failure I was by my own admission well qualified to place the laurel.
It was because she had made so much money and Mr. Highmore had taken
such care o