V


We gathered on Sunday evenings in two rooms, with folding doors
between, & hung, I think, with photographs from Dutch masters, and
in one room there was always, I think, a table with cold meat. I
can recall but one elderly man--Dunn his name was--rather silent
and full of good sense, an old friend of Henley's. We were young
men, none as yet established in his own, or in the world's
opinion, and Henley was our leader and our confidant. One evening
I found him alone amused and exasperated.

He cried: 'Young A... has just been round to ask my advice. Would
I think it a wise thing if he bolted with Mrs. B...? "Have you
quite determined to do it?" I asked him. "Quite." "Well," I said,
"in that case I refuse to give you any advice."' Mrs. B... was a
beautiful talented woman, who, as the Welsh triad said of
Guinevere, 'was much given to being carried off.' I think we
listened to him, and often obeyed him, partly because he was quite
plainly not upon the side of our parents. We might have a
different ground of quarrel, but the result seemed more important
than the ground, and his confident manner and speech made us
believe, perhaps for the first time, in victory. And besides, if
he did denounce, and in my case he certainly did, what we held in
secret reverence, he never failed to associate it with things, or
persons, that did not move us to reverence. Once I found him just