knew how to abound and he knew how to abstain. His abstinence, in fact,
gave the measure of his abundance. He held himself in for five perilous
weeks; and when he let himself rip again it was with a burst that landed
him in the front page of the _Morning Standard_.

What he sketched for me had no resemblance to the career of a peaceful
man of letters. It was a hot race, a combat as bloody (his own word) as
those contests of which he was the delighted eye-witness.

He had come thin and worn out of the struggle, but you gathered that he
had borne himself in it with coolness and deliberate caution. His phrases
produced a false effect of vehemence and excitement. You saw that he had
simply followed out a calculated scheme, not one step of which had
miscarried. And you felt that his most passionate affairs would be
conducted with the same formidable precision.

I ought to have felt it. For we were precious soon in the thick of it--of
his most passionate affair.

I had dined him, I suppose, about three times, and I had lunched him
twice. And I had had tea with him once in his bedroom. He was living in
one room in a street off the Euston Road, and he called it his bedroom
because it looked so much more that than anything else. I might have let
it go at that. But I didn't. I had seen his bedroom. I took the liberty
of inquiring into his finances. They were, he said, as yet undeveloped.
He had a scheme of his own for improving them, but while it was maturing
he was, he certainly _was_ open to offers of work. I got him some
translation. (He was a fairly good French scholar.)

Then--it was the fatality of the proceedings that impressed them on my