Page:The Soft Side (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1900).djvu/215

Rh three quite different things before it came round to my peculiar view of Delavoy. It in fact never addressed itself at all to that altar, and we met on the question only when, the posthumous volume having come out, I had found myself wound up enough to risk indiscretions. By this time I had twice been with him and had had three or four of his notes. They were the barest bones, but they phrased, in a manner, a connection. This was not a triumph, however, to bring me so near to him as to judge of the origin and nature of his relations with Miss Delavoy. That his magazine would, after all, publish no specimens was proved by the final appearance of the new book at a single splendid bound. The impression it made was of the deepest—it remains the author's highest mark; but I heard, in spite of this, of no emptying of table-drawers for Mr. Beston's benefit. What the book is we know still better to-day, and perhaps even Mr. Beston does; but there was no approach at the time to a general rush, and I therefore of course saw that if he was thick with the great man's literary legatee—as I, at least, supposed her—it was on some basis independent of his bringing anything out. Nevertheless he quite rose to the idea of my study, as I called it, which I put before him in a brief interview.

'You ought to have something. That thing has brought him to the front with a leap!!'

'The front? What do you call the front?'

He had laughed so good-humouredly that I could do the same. 'Well, the front is where you and I are.' I told him my paper was already finished.

'Ah then, you must write it again.'

'Oh, but look at it first!'

'You must write it again,' Mr. Beston only repeated. Before I left him, however, he had explained a little. 'You must see his sister.'

'I shall be delighted to do that.'

'She's a great friend of mine, and my having something