ed me of being spiteful because I had been foiled. Our commerce had
always that pleasant latitude. The thing Vereker had mentioned to me was
exactly the thing he, Corvick, had wanted me to speak of in my review.
On my suggesting at last that with the assistance I had now given him
he would doubtless be prepared to speak of it himself he admitted freely
that before doing this there was more he must understand. What he would
have said, had he reviewed the new book, was that there was evidently in
the writer's inmost art something to _be_ understood. I hadn't so much
as hinted at that: no wonder the writer hadn't been flattered! I asked
Corvick what he really considered he meant by his own supersubtlety,
and, unmistakably kindled, he replied: "It isn't for the vulgar--it
isn't for the vulgar!" He had hold of the tail of something; he would
pull hard, pull it right out. He pumped me dry on Vereker's strange
confidence and, pronouncing me the luckiest of mortals, mentioned half a
dozen questions he wished to goodness I had had the gumption to put. Yet
on the other hand he didn't want to be told too much--it would spoil the
fun of seeing what would come. The failure of my fun was at the moment
of our meeting not complete, but I saw it ahead, and Corvick saw that
I saw it. I, on my side, saw likewise that one of the first things he
would do would be to rush off with my story to Gwendolen.

On the very day after my talk with him I was surprised by the receipt
of a note from Hugh Vereker, to whom our encounter at Bridges had
been recalled, as he mentioned, by his falling, in a magazine, on
some article to which my signature was appended. "I read it with great
pleasure," he wrote, "and remembered under its influence our lively
conversation by your bedroom fire. The consequence of this has been
that I begin to measure the temerity of my having saddled you with a
knowledge that you may find something of a burden. Now that the fit's
over I can't imagine how I came to be moved so much beyond my wont. I
had never before related, no matter in what expansion, the history of
my little secret, and I shall never speak of the business again. I was
accidentally so much more explicit with you than it had ever entered
into my game to be, that I find this game--I mean the pleasure of
playing it--suffers considerably. In short, if you can understand it,
I've spoiled a part of my fun. I really don't want to give anybody what
I believe you clever y