Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/132

124 fine things for granted. He also abounded more than ever in his own sense, reminding his friend how no recollection of him, no evocation of him in absence could do him justice. You couldn't recall him without seeming to exaggerate him, and then recognized when you saw him that your exaggeration had fallen short. He emerged out of vagueness (his Sicily might have been the Sicily of "A Winter's Tale"), and would evidently be reabsorbed in it; but his presence was positive and pervasive enough. He was very lively while he lasted. His connections were with beauty, urbanity and conversation, as usual, but it was a circle you couldn't find in the Court Guide. Nick had a sense that he knew "a lot of æsthetic people," but he dealt in ideas much more than in names and addresses. He was genial and jocose, sunburnt and romantically allusive. Nick gathered that he had been living for many days in a Saracenic tower, where his principal occupation was to watch for the flushing of the west. He had retained all the serenity of his opinions, and made light, with a candour of which the only defect was apparently that it was not quite enough a conscious virtue, of many of the objects of common esteem. When Nick asked him what he had been doing he replied: "Oh, living, you know;" and the tone of the words seemed to offer them as a record of magnificent success. He made a long visit, staying to luncheon and after luncheon, so that the little studio heard all at once more conversation, and of a wider scope, than in the several previous years of its history. With much of our story left to tell, it is a pity that so little of this rich colloquy may be transcribed here; because, as affairs took their course,