of the face would betray them.

I liked them--they were so simple; and I had no objection to them if
they would suit. But, somehow, with all their perfections I didn't
easily believe in them. After all they were amateurs, and the ruling
passion of my life was the detestation of the amateur. Combined with
this was another perversity--an innate preference for the represented
subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to
be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one
was sure. Whether they WERE or not was a subordinate and almost
always a profitless question. There were other considerations, the
first of which was that I already had two or three people in use,
notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who
for a couple of years had come to me regularly for my illustrations
and with whom I was still--perhaps ignobly--satisfied. I frankly
explained to my visitors how the case stood; but they had taken more
precautions than I supposed. They had reasoned out their
opportunity, for Claude Rivet had told them of the projected edition
de luxe of one of the writers of our day--the rarest of the
novelists--who, long neglected by the multitudinous vulgar and dearly
prized by the attentive (need I mention Philip Vincent?) had had the
happy fortune of seeing, late in life, the dawn and then the full
light of a higher criticism--an estimate in which, on the part of the
public, there was something really of expiation. The edition in
question, planned by a publisher of taste, was practically an act of
high reparation; the wood-cuts with which it was to be enriched were
the homage of English art to one of the most independent
representatives of English letters. Major and Mrs. Monarch confessed
to me that they had hoped I might be able to work THEM into my share
of the enterprise. They knew I was to do the first of the books,