laughter.  Some of the admirers, with the generosity of youth, nobly came to the rescue.  They made a paper war and talked of “The cruelty and cowardice of the attack,” “The stab in the dark,” “Journalistic marauding,” “Disappointed author turned critic.”  The slate was one that I am bound to say was killing in both senses of the word.  A book less worthless could never have lived under it.  It was one of those decisive reviews of all ages. Prejudices was withdrawn by the publisher fearful of damaging his prestige.  Yet it was never looked on as a rarity, and fell at book auctions for a shilling, for some time after, amidst general tittering.  The daily papers meanwhile devoted columns to the discussion.  I telegraphed to Burrage in cipher and congratulated him, knowing that secrets leak out sometimes through the post office.  I was surprised to get no reply for some weeks, but Curtis said he was lying low while the excitement lasted.  One day I got a letter simply saying, “For God’s sake come.  I am very ill.”  I went at once.  How shall I describe to you the pitiful condition I found him in?  The doctor told me he was suffering from incipient tuberculosis due to cerebral excitement and mental trouble.  When I went in to see him he was lying in bed, pale and emaciated as a corpse, surrounded by friends and relations.  He asked every one to go out of the room; he had something of importance to say to me.  I then learned what you have divined already.  The anonymous author of Prejudices was no other than Quentin Burrage himself.  Or rather not himself, but the other self of which neither I nor Curtis knew anything.  He had been living a double existence.  As a writer of trashy essays and verse, an incomplete sentimentalist surrounded by an admiring band of young ladies and gentlemen, he was not recognised as the able critic and the anonymous slater of the “Acropolis.”

’When he first received his own book for review he recalled the words of Curtis.  He must be honest, impartial, and just.  No one knew better the faults of Prejudices.  As he began to write, the old spirit of the slater came over him.  His better self conquered.  He forgot for the moment that he was the author.  He hardly realised the sting of his own sarcasms even when he saw them in proof.  It was not until it appeared, and the papers were full of the controversy, that the cruelty and unfairness of the attack dawned on him.  I was much shocked at the confession, and the extraordinary duplicity of Burrage, who had been living a lie for the last ten years.  His denunciation of poor Curtis pained me.  I would have upbraided him, but his tortured face and hacking cough made me relent.  I need not prolong the painful story.  Burrage never recovered.  He sank into galloping consumption, only aggravated by a broken heart.  I saw him on his deathbed at Rome.  He was attended by Strange, and died in his arms.  His last words to me were, “Rivers, tell Curtis I forgive him.”