Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/33

gift was liberal, almost wonderful—an assertion I make even while remembering to how many clever women, early and late, his work had been dear. It was not only that the woman he was to marry was in love with him, but that (this was the strangeness) she had really seen almost better than any one what he could do. The greatest strangeness was that she didn't want him to do something different. This boundless belief was, indeed, the main way of her devotion; and, as an act of faith, it naturally asked for miracles. She was a rare wife for a poet, if she was not perhaps the best who could have been picked out for a poor man.

Well, we were to have the miracles at all events, and we were in a perfect state of mind to receive them. There were more of us evety day, and we thought highly even of our friend's odd jobs and pot-boilers. The Beacon had had no successor, but he found some quiet corners and stray chances. Perpetually poking the fire and looking out of the window, he was certainly not a monster of facility, but he was, thanks perhaps to a certain method in that madness, a monster of certainty. It wasn't every one, however, who knew him for this: many editors printed him but once. He was getting a small reputation as a man it was well to have the first time: he created obscure apprehensions as to what might happen the second. He was good for making an impression, but no one seemed exactly to know what the impression was good for when made. The reason was simply that they had not seen yet The Major Key, that fiery-hearted rose as to which we watched in private the formation of petal after petal. Nothing mattered but that, for it had already elicited a splendid bid, much talked about in Mrs. Highmore's drawing-room, where, at this point my reminiscences grow particularly thick. Her roses bloomed all the year, and her sociability increased with her row of prizes. We had an idea that we "met every one" there—so we