I was frankly, at the end of three days, a very prejudiced critic, so that one morning when, in the garden, my great man had offered to read me something I quite held my breath as I listened.

It was the written scheme of another book--something put aside long ago, before his illness, but that he had lately taken out again to reconsider.

He had been turning it round when I came down on him, and it had grown magnificently under this second hand.

Loose liberal confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping eloquent letter--the overflow into talk of an artist's amorous plan.

The theme I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest he had yet treated; and this familiar statement of it, full too of fine maturities, was really, in summarised splendour, a mine of gold, a precious independent work.