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vitality."
Again she had a meditative moment. "And is his magnificent vitality
the cause of his vices?"
"Your questions are formidable, but I'm glad you put them. I was
thinking of his noble intellect. His vices, as you say, have been much
exaggerated: they consist mainly after all in one comprehensive
defect."
"A want of will?"
"A want of dignity."
"He doesn't recognise his obligations?"
"On the contrary, he recognises them with effusion, especially in public:
he smiles and bows and beckons across the street to them. But when
they pass over he turns away, and he speedily loses them in the crowd.
The recognition's purely spiritual--it isn't in the least social. So he

leaves all his belongings to other people to take care of. He accepts
favours, loans, sacrifices--all with nothing more deterrent than an
agony of shame. Fortunately we're a little faithful band, and we do what
we can." I held my tongue about the natural children, engendered, to
the number of three, in the wantonness of his youth. I only remarked
that he did make efforts--often tremendous ones. "But the efforts," I
said, "never come to much: the only things that come to much are the
abandonments, the surrenders."
"And how much do they come to?"
"You're right to put it as if we had a big bill to pay, but, as I've told you
before, your questions are rather terrible. They come, these mere
exercises of genius, to a great sum total of poetry, of philosophy, a
mighty mass of speculation, notation, quotation. The genius is there,
you see, to meet the surrender; but there's no genius to support the
defence."
"But what is there, after all, at his age, to show?"
"In the way of achievement recognised and reputation established?" I
asked. "To 'show' if you will, there isn't much, since his writing, mostly,
isn't as fine, isn't certainly as showy, as his talk. Moreover two-thirds of
his work are merely colossal projects and announcements. 'Showing'
Frank Saltram is often a poor business," I went on: "we endeavoured,
you'll have observed, to show him to-night! However, if he HAD
lectured he'd have lectured divinely. It would just have been his talk."
"And what would his talk just have been?"
I was conscious of some ineffectiveness, as well perhaps as of a little
impatience, as I replied: "The exhibition of a splendid intellect." My
young lady looked not quite satisfied at this, but as I wasn't prepared
for another question I hastily pursued: "The sight of a great suspended
swinging crystal--huge lucid lustrous, a block of light--flashing back
every impression of life and every possibility of thought!"
This gave her something to turn over till we had passed out to the
dusky porch of the hall, in front of which the lamps of a quiet
brougham were almost the only thing Saltram's treachery hadn't
extinguished. I went with her to the door of her carriage, out of which
she leaned a moment after she had thanked me and taken her seat. Her
smile even in the darkness was pretty. "I do want to see that crystal!"
"You've only to come to the next lecture."

"I go abroad in a day or two with my aunt."
"Wait over till next week," I suggested. "It's quite worth it."
She became grave. "Not unless he really comes!" At which the
brougham started off, carrying her away too fast, fortunately for my
manners, to allow me to exclaim "Ingratitude!"

CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Saltram made a great affair of her right to be informed where her
husband had been the second evening he failed to meet his audience.
She came to me to ascertain, but I couldn't satisfy her, for in spite of
my ingenuity I remained in ignorance. It wasn't till much later that I
found this had not been the case with Kent Mulville, whose hope for
the best never twirled the thumbs of him more placidly than when he
happened to know the worst. He had known it on the occasion I speak
of--that is immediately after. He was impenetrable then, but ultimately
confessed. What he confessed was more than I shall now venture to
make public. It was of course familiar to me that Saltram was incapable
of keeping the engagements which, after their separation, he had
entered into with regard to his wife, a deeply wronged, justly resentful,
quite irreproachable and insufferable person. She often appeared at my
chambers to talk over his lapses; for if, as she declared, she had washed
her hands of him, she had carefully preserved the water of this ablution,
which she handed about for analysis. She had arts of her own of
exciting one's impatience, the most infallible of which was perhaps her
assumption that we were kind to her