Beardsley, frantically delighted and excited, undertook to draw a specimen design for Dent’s decision; yet had his hesitant modesties. Remember that up to this time he had practically drawn nothing of any consequence--he was utterly unknown--and his superb master-work that was to be, so different from and so little akin in any way to mediævalism, was hidden even from his own vision. The few drawings he had made were in mimicry of Burne-Jones and promised well enough for a mediæval missal in a pretty-pretty sort of way. He was becoming a trifle old for studentship--he was twenty before he made a drawing that was not mediocre. He had never seen one of the elaborate Morris books, and Frederick Evans had to show him a Kelmscott in order to give him some idea of what was in Dent’s mind--of what was expected of him. At last he made to depart; and, shaking hands with Frederick Evans at the shop-door, he hesitated and, speaking low, said: “It’s too good a chance. I’m sure I shan’t be equal to it. I am not worthy of it.” Evans assured him that he only had to set himself to it and all would be well. Within a few days, Beardsley putting forth all his powers to create the finest thing he could, and making an eager study of the Kelmscott tradition, took the drawing to Dent--the elaborate and now famous Burne-Jonesesque design which is known as _The Achieving of the San Grael_, which must have been as much a revelation of his powers to the youth himself as it was to Dent. The drawing was destined to appear in gravure as the frontispiece to the Second volume of the _Morte d’Arthur_. Now it is most important to note that this, Beardsley’s first serious original work, shows him in mid-1892, at twenty, to have made a bold effort to create a marked style by combining his Burne-Jonesesque mediævalism with his Japanesques of the Hairy Line; _and the design is signed with his early “Japanesque mark.”_ It is his first use of the Japanesque mark. Any designs signed with his name before this time reveal unmistakably the initials A. V. B. The early “Japanesque mark” is always stunted and rude. Beardsley’s candlesticks were a sort of mascot to him; and I feel sure that the Japanese mark was meant for three candles and three flames--a baser explanation was given by some, but it was only the evil thought of those who tried to see evil in all that Beardsley did. Dent at once commissioned the youth to illustrate and decorate the _Morte d’Arthur_, which was to begin to appear in parts a year thereafter, in the June of 1893--the second volume in 1894.