Rickman was sorry for her, but the sight and touch of her were hateful to him.  He took her advice however.  He had had good luck with some articles, and he called on Pilkington the next afternoon and paid him his thirty pounds with the interest.  Dicky was in a good humour and inclined to be communicative.  He congratulated him on his present berth, and informed him that Rickman’s was “going it.”  The old man had just raised four thousand on the Harden library, the only security that he, Dicky, would accept.

“I suppose,” said Rickman simply, “you’d no idea of its value when you let him buy it?”

Dicky stared through his eye-glass with his blue eyes immense and clear.

“My dear fellow, do you take me for a d——­d fool?”

So that had been Dicky’s little game?  Trust Dicky.

And yet for the time being, held in the opposing grip of two firm cupidities, it was safe, the great Harden library, once the joy of scholars, loved with such high intellectual passion, and now the centre of so many hot schemes and rivalries and lusts.  Now that the work of sacrilege was complete, housed at last in the Gin Palace of Art, it stood, useless in its desecrated beauty, cumbering the shelves whence no sale would remove it until either Rickman’s or Pilkington let go.  So far the Hardens were avenged.

CHAPTER XLII

More than once, after that night when Rickman dined with him, Jewdwine became the prey of many misgivings.  He felt that in taking Rickman up he was assuming an immense responsibility.  It might have been better, happier for Rickman, poor fellow, if after all he had left him in his decent obscurity; but having dragged him out of it, he was in a manner answerable to the world for Rickman and to Rickman for the world.  Supposing Rickman disappointed the world?  Supposing the world disappointed Rickman?

Jewdwine lived in the hope, natural to a distinguished critic, of some day lighting upon a genius.  The glory of that find would go far to compensate him for his daily traffic with mediocrity.  Genius was rarely to be seen, but Jewdwine felt that he would be the first to recognize it if he did see it; the first to penetrate its many curious disguises; the first to give it an introduction (if it wanted one) to his own superior world.  And here was Rickman—­manifestly in need of that introduction—­a man who unquestionably had about him some of the marks by which a genius is identified; and yet he left you terribly uncertain.  He was the very incarnation of uncertainty.  Jewdwine was perfectly willing to help the man if only he were sure of the genius.  But was he sure?  Had it really pleased the inscrutable divine thing to take up its abode in this otherwise rather impossible person?