"Well, what's that but silly? What on earth does 'awfully clever'
mean? For God's sake try to get AT him. Don't let him suffer by
our arrangement. Speak of him, you know, if you can, as _I_ should
have spoken of him."

I wondered an instant. "You mean as far and away the biggest of
the lot--that sort of thing?"

Corvick almost groaned. "Oh you know, I don't put them back to
back that way; it's the infancy of art! But he gives me a pleasure
so rare; the sense of"--he mused a little--"something or other."

I wondered again. "The sense, pray, of want?"

"My dear man, that's just what I want YOU to say!"

Even before he had banged the door I had begun, book in hand, to
prepare myself to say it. I sat up with Vereker half the night;
Corvick couldn't have done more than that. He was awfully clever--
I stuck to that, but he wasn't a bit the biggest of the lot. I
didn't allude to the lot, however; I flattered myself that I
emerged on this occasion from the infancy of art. "It's all
right," they declared vividly at the office; and when the number
appeared I felt there was a basis on which I could meet the great
man. It gave me confidence for a day or two--then that confidence
dropped. I had fancied him reading it with relish, but if Corvick
wasn't satisfied how could Vereker himself be? I reflected indeed
that the heat of the admirer was sometimes grosser even than the
appetite of the scribe. Corvick at all events wrote me from Paris