faith have become, like the Trappists, a silent order. If to the
day of his death, after mortal disenchantments, the impression he first
produced always evoked the word "ingenuous," those to whom his face was
familiar can easily imagine what it must have been when it still had the
light of youth. I had never seen a man of genius look so passive, a man
of experience so off his guard. At the period I made his acquaintance
this freshness was all un-brushed. His foot had begun to stumble, but he
was full of big intentions and of sweet Maud Stannace. Black-haired and
pale, deceptively languid, he had the eyes of a clever child and the
voice of a bronze bell. He saw more even than I had done in the girl
he was engaged to; as time went on I became conscious that we had both,
properly enough, seen rather more than there was. Our odd situation,
that of the three of us, became perfectly possible from the moment I
observed that he had more patience with her than I should have had. I
was happy at not having to supply this quantity, and she, on her side,
found pleasure in being able to be impertinent to me without incurring
the reproach of a bad wife.

Limbert's novels appeared to have brought him no money: they had only
brought him, so far as I could then make out, tributes that took up his
time. These indeed brought him from several quarters some other things,
and on my part at the end of three months _The Blackport Beacon_. I
don't to-day remember how I obtained for him the London correspondence
of the great northern organ, unless it was through somebody's having
obtained it for myself. I seem to recall that I got rid of it in
Limbert's interest, persuaded the editor that he was much the better
man. The better man was naturally the man who had pledged himself
to support a charming wife. We were neither of us good, as the event
proved, but he had a finer sort of badness. _The Blackport
Beacon_ had two London correspondents--one a supposed haunter of
political circles, the other a votary of questions sketchily classified
as literary. They were both expected to be lively, and what was held out
to each was that it was honourably open to him to be livelier than the
other. I recollect the political correspondent of that period and how
the problem offered to Ray Limbert was to try to be livelier than Pat
Moyle. He had not yet seemed to me so candid as when he undertook this
exploit, which brought matters to a head with Mrs. Stannace, ina