This mood lingered with me during tea, and it was not till that meal was over that the miracle happened.  I do not know whether it was the Englishman or his wife that wrought the magic:  or perhaps it was Monica, nibbling “speculations” with her sharp white teeth; but at all events I was led with delicate diplomacy to talk about myself, and I presently realised that I was performing the grateful labour really well.  My words were warmed into life by an eloquence that is not ordinarily mine, my adjectives were neither commonplace nor far-fetched, my adverbs fell into their sockets with a sob of joy.  I spoke of myself with a noble sympathy, a compassion so intense that it seemed divinely altruistic.  And gradually, as the spirit of creation woke in my blood, I revealed, trembling between a natural sensitiveness and a generous abandonment of restraint, the inner life of a man of genius.

I passed lightly by his misunderstood childhood to concentrate my sympathies on the literary struggles of his youth.  I spoke of the ignoble environment, the material hardships, the masterpieces written at night to be condemned in the morning, the songs of his heart that were too great for his immature voice to sing; and all the while I bade them watch the fire of his faith burning with a constant and quenchless flame.  I traced the development of his powers, and instanced some of his poems, my poems, which I recited so well that they sounded to me, and I swear to them also, like staves from an angelic hymn-book.  I asked their compassion for the man who, having such things in his heart, was compelled to waste his hours in sordid journalistic labours.

So by degrees I brought them to the present time, when, fatigued by a world that would not acknowledge the truth of his message, the man of genius was preparing to retire from life, in order to devote himself to the composition of five or six masterpieces.  I described these masterpieces to them in outline, with a suggestive detail dashed in here and there to show how they would be finished.  Nothing is easier than to describe unwritten literary masterpieces in outline; but by that time I had thoroughly convinced my audience and myself, and we looked upon these things as completed books.  The atmosphere was charged with the spirit of high endeavour, of wonderful accomplishment.  I heard the Englishman breathing deeply, and through the dusk I was aware of the eyes of Monica, the wide, vague eyes of a young girl in which youth can find exactly what it pleases.

It is a good thing to be great once or twice in our lives, and that night I was wise enough to depart before the inevitable anti-climax.  At the gate the Englishman pressed me warmly by the hand and begged me to honour his house with my presence again.  His wife echoed the wish, and Monica looked at me with those vacant eyes, that but a few years ago I would have charged with the wine of my song.  As I stood in the tram on my way back to Brussels I felt