The great man took her hand. 'My dear child,' he said, 'I have been thinking over our conversation of the other day. I am, of course, only anxious to be of service to you and to your brother, and so I thought I would call.' He was quite magnificent in his fur-lined coat, and he was very tall and big, so that he seemed to fill up the whole room. But he had an unusual air of hesitation. 'I thought,' he repeated, 'that I would call. Yes----' The girl sat with her hands in her lap, waiting. 'You remember what I told you about--the--the verses which you sometimes bring me----' 'Oh! Yes. I remember. It is so kind of you, Mr. Feilding, so very kind and noble----' For the moment the dazzling prospect of seeing her verses acknowledged as her own in place of seeing them adopted by the Editor, made her believe that none but a truly noble person could do such a thing. 'I mean to begin even sooner than I had intended. It is true that when I took your verses I made them my own by those little touches and corrections which, as you know very well, distinguish true poetry from its imitation'--It was not until he was gone that Effie remembered that not a single alteration had ever been made. So great is the power of the human voice that for the moment she listened and acquiesced, subdued and ashamed of herself--'At last, my young friend, the time for alteration and improvement is past. You can now stand alone--your verses signed--if, of course, we remain, as I hope, on the same friendly relations.' 'Oh!' she murmured. 'Enough. We understand each other. Your brother, you told me, is at work on a play--a romantic drama.' 'Yes. He has finished it. He has been at work upon it for two years, thinking of nothing else all day.' Mr. Feilding nodded approval. 'That is the way,' he said heartily, 'to produce good work. Perfect--absolute--devotion--regardless of any earthly consideration. Art--Art--before all else. And now it is done?' 'Yes; he is copying it out.' 'Effie'--he suddenly changed the subject--'you have never told me of your resources. Tell me! I do not ask out of idle curiosity. That you are not rich I know----' 'No, we are not rich. We have a little--a thousand pounds apiece--and we have resolved to live on that, and on what we can get besides, until we have made our way. We have no rich relations to help us. My father is a country clergyman with a small living. We came to town so that Archie could get treatment for his hip. He is better now, and we shall stay altogether if we can only hold on.' 'A thousand pounds each. That is seventy pounds a year, I suppose?' 'Yes. But during the last twelve months you have given me a hundred pounds for my verses--three pounds for every poem, and there were thirty-three altogether in the volume--"Voices and Echoes," you know.'