And the next afternoon he arrived. I met him at the threshold of the
hotel, introduced him to our landlady, Madame Pamparagoux (who stared
rather wildly, not being accustomed to see her lodgers so mediævally
attired), and showed him upstairs to the room I had engaged.

There he invited me to be seated while he unpacked his portmanteau and
put his things in order. These, I noticed, were un-Britishly few and
simple. I could discern no vestiges of either sponge or tub. As he
moved backwards and forwards between his chest of drawers and
dressing-table, he would cast frequent affectionate glances at his
double, now in the glass of the _armoire_, now in that above the
chimney. He was favouring me meantime with a running monologue of an
autobiographical complexion.

'I am a self-educated man. My father was a wine merchant in Leeds. At
sixteen he put me to serve in the shop of a cousin, a print-seller. It
was there, I think, that my literary instincts awoke. I contributed
occasional art notes to a local paper. At twenty I came up to London
and began my definite career, as a reporter. I was soon earning thirty
shillings a week, which seemed to me magnificent. But I aspired to
higher things. I felt within me the stirrings of what I could not help
believing to be genius--true genius. I longed to distinguish myself,
to emerge from the crowd, from the background, to make myself
remarked, to do something, to be somebody, to see my name a famous
one. I was fortunate enough at this epoch to attract the notice of
X----, the poet. He believed in me, and encouraged me to believe in
myself. It is one of the regrets of my life that he died before I had
achieved my celebrity. However, I have achieved it. My name is a
household word wherever the English language is read. I have written
the only novels of my time that are sure to live. They will live not