liberal confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping
eloquent letter--the overflow into talk of an artist's amorous
plan. The theme I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest he
had yet treated; and this familiar statement of it, full too of
fine maturities, was really, in summarised splendour, a mine of
gold, a precious independent work. I remember rather profanely
wondering whether the ultimate production could possibly keep at
the pitch. His reading of the fond epistle, at any rate, made me
feel as if I were, for the advantage of posterity, in close
correspondence with him--were the distinguished person to whom it
had been affectionately addressed. It was a high distinction
simply to be told such things. The idea he now communicated had
all the freshness, the flushed fairness, of the conception
untouched and untried: it was Venus rising from the sea and before
the airs had blown upon her. I had never been so throbbingly
present at such an unveiling. But when he had tossed the last
bright word after the others, as I had seen cashiers in banks,
weighing mounds of coin, drop a final sovereign into the tray, I
knew a sudden prudent alarm.

"My dear master, how, after all, are you going to do it? It's
infinitely noble, but what time it will take, what patience and
independence, what assured, what perfect conditions! Oh for a lone
isle in a tepid sea!"

"Isn't this practically a lone isle, and aren't you, as an
encircling medium, tepid enough?" he asked, alluding with a laugh
to the wonder of my young admiration and the narrow limits of his
little provincial home. "Time isn't what I've lacked hitherto:
the question hasn't been to find it, but to use it. Of course my