"I don't quite know how to explain it to you," he said, "but it was
the very fact that your notice of my book had a spice of
intelligence, it was just your exceptional sharpness, that produced
the feeling--a very old story with me, I beg you to believe--under
the momentary influence of which I used in speaking to that good
lady the words you so naturally resent. I don't read the things in
the newspapers unless they're thrust upon me as that one was--it's
always one's best friend who does it! But I used to read them
sometimes--ten years ago. I dare say they were in general rather
stupider then; at any rate it always struck me they missed my
little point with a perfection exactly as admirable when they
patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins.
Whenever since I've happened to have a glimpse of them they were
still blazing away--still missing it, I mean, deliciously. YOU
miss it, my dear fellow, with inimitable assurance; the fact of
your being awfully clever and your article's being awfully nice
doesn't make a hair's breadth of difference. It's quite with you
rising young men," Vereker laughed, "that I feel most what a
failure I am!"

I listened with keen interest; it grew keener as he talked. "YOU a
failure--heavens! What then may your 'little point' happen to be?"

"Have I got to TELL you, after all these years and labours?" There
was something in the friendly reproach of this--jocosely
exaggerated--that made me, as an ardent young seeker for truth,
blush to the roots of my hair. I'm as much in the dark as ever,
though I've grown used in a sense to my obtuseness; at that moment,