seeing all that it
meant. Difficulty was the law of life, but one could thank heaven it was
exceptionally present in that horrid quarter. There was the difficulty
that inspired, the difficulty of _The Major Key_ to wit, which it was
after all base to sacrifice to the turning of somersaults for pennies.
These convictions Ray Limbert beguiled his fresh wait by blandly
entertaining: not indeed, I think, that the failure of his attempt to
be chatty didn't leave him slightly humiliated. If it was bad enough
to have grinned through a horse-collar it was very bad indeed to have
grinned in vain. Well, he would try no more grinning or at least no more
horse-collars. The only success worth one's powder was success in the
line of one's idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and
what was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that one
happened to be? One's things were characteristic or they were nothing.
I look back rather fondly on our having exchanged in those days these
admirable remarks and many others; on our having been very happy too, in
spite of postponements and obscurities, in spite also of such occasional
hauntings as could spring from our lurid glimpse of the fact that even
twaddle cunningly calculated was far above people's heads. It was easy
to wave away spectres by the reflection that all one had to do was not
to write for people; it was certainly not for people that Limbert wrote
while he hammered at _The Major Key_. The taint of literature was fatal
only in a certain kind of air, which was precisely the kind against
which we had now closed our window. Mrs. Stannace rose from her crumpled
cushions as soon as she had obtained an adjournment, and Maud looked
pale and proud, quite victorious and superior, at her having obtained
nothing more. Maud behaved well, I thought, to her mother, and well
indeed for a girl who had mainly been taught to be flowerlike to every
one. What she gave Ray Limbert her fine, abundant needs made him
then and ever pay for; but the gift was liberal, almost wonderful--an
assertion I make even while remembering to how many clever women, early
and late, his work has been dear. It was not only that the woman he was
to marry was in love with him, but that (this was the strangeness)
she had really seen almost better than any one what he could do. The
greatest strangeness was that she didn't want him to do something
different. This boundless belief was indeed the main wa