I professed every willingness, and for five minutes I listened, but
it would be too much to say that I understood. I don't even now, but
it is not important. My vision was of other matters than those they
put before me, and while they desired there should be no mistake
about their ancestors I became more and more lucid about themselves.
I got away as soon as possible, and walked home through the great
dusky, empty London--the best of all conditions for thought. By the
time I reached my door my little article was practically composed--
ready to be transferred on the morrow from the polished plate of
fancy. I believe it attracted some notice, was thought "graceful"
and was said to be by some one else. I had to be pointed without
being lively, and it took some tact. But what I said was much less
interesting than what I thought--especially during the half-hour I
spent in my armchair by the fire, smoking the cigar I always light
before going to bed. I went to sleep there, I believe; but I
continued to moralise about Greville Fane. I am reluctant to lose
that retrospect altogether, and this is a dim little memory of it, a
document not to "serve." The dear woman had written a hundred
stories, but none so curious as her own.

When first I knew her she had published half-a-dozen fictions, and I
believe I had also perpetrated a novel. She was more than a dozen
years older than I, but she was a person who always acknowledged her
relativity. It was not so very long ago, but in London, amid the big
waves of the present, even a near horizon gets hidden. I met her at
some dinner and took her down, rather flattered at offering my arm to
a celebrity. She didn't look like one, with her matronly, mild,
inanimate face, but I supposed her greatness would come out in her
conversation. I gave it all the opportunities I could, but I was not
disappointed when I found her only a dull, kind woman. This was why