renown, and innocent enough to
believe the occasion would demand the display of an acquaintance with
his "last."

Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even had time to
read it; he had gone to pieces in consequence of news requiring--as on
precipitate reflection he judged--that he should catch the night-mail to
Paris. He had had a telegram from Gwendolen Erme in answer to his letter
offering to fly to her aid. I knew already about Gwendolen Erme; I had
never seen her, but I had my ideas, which were mainly to the effect that
Corvick would marry her if her mother would only die. That lady seemed
now in a fair way to oblige him; after some dreadful mistake about some
climate or some waters, she had suddenly collapsed on the return from
abroad. Her daughter, unsupported and alarmed, desiring to make a
rush for home but hesitating at the risk, had accepted our friend's
assistance, and it was my secret belief that at the sight of him Mrs.
Erme would pull round. His own belief was scarcely to be called
secret; it discernibly at any rate differed from mine. He had showed me
Gwendolen's photograph with the remark that she wasn't pretty but was
awfully interesting; she had published at the age of nineteen a novel
in three volumes, "Deep Down," about which, in _The Middle_, he had been
really splendid. He appreciated my present eagerness and undertook that
the periodical in question should do no less; then at the last, with
his hand on the door, he said to me: "Of course you'll be all right,
you know." Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: "I mean you won't be
silly."

"Silly--about Vereker! Why, what do I ever find him but awfully clever?"

"Well, what's that but silly? What on earth does 'awfully clever'
mean? For God's sake try to get _at_ him. Don't let him suffer by our
arrangement. Speak of him, you know, if you can, as should have spoken
of him."

I wondered an instant. "You mean as far and away the biggest of the
lot--that sort of thing?"

Corvick almost groaned. "Oh, you know, I don't put them back to back
that way; it's the infancy of art! But he gives me a pleasure so rare;
the sense of "--he mused a little--"something or other."

I wondered again. "The sense, pray, of what?"

"My dear man, that's just what I want _you_ to say!"

Even before Corvick had banged the door I had begun, book in hand, to
prepare myself to say it. I sat up with Vereker half the night; Corvick
couldn't have done more than