Morris was not the only one who baffled the efforts of Vallance to get the young Beardsley a hearing. By John Lane, fantastically enough, he was also to be rejected! Beardsley was always full of vast schemes and plans; one of these at the moment was the illustrating of Meredith’s _Shaving of Shagpat_--a desire to which he returned and on which he harped again and again. Vallance, hoping that John Lane, a member of the firm of Elkin Mathews and John Lane, then new and unconventional publishers, would become the bridge to achievement, brought about a meeting between Beardsley and John Lane at a small gathering at Vallance’s rooms as Yuletide drew near. But John Lane was not impressed; and nothing came of it. It was rather an irony of fate that Beardsley, who resented this rejection by John Lane, for some reason, with considerable bitterness, was in a twelvemonth to be eagerly sought after by the same John Lane to their mutual success, increase in reputation, triumph, and prodigious advertisement. However neither the frown of William Morris, nor the icy aloofness of Watts, nor the indifference of John Lane, could chill the ardour of the young Aubrey Beardsley. He was free. He had two big commissions. His health greatly improved. He was happy in his work. Having mastered the possibilities and the limitations of the Kelmscott book decoration, he concentrated on surpassing it. At once his line began to put on strength. And the Japanese convention tickled him hugely--here he could use his line without troubling about floor or ceiling or perspective in which to place his figures. He could relieve the monotony of the heavy _Morte d’Arthur_ convention by drawing fantasies in this Japanesque vein for _Bon Mots_, both conventions rooted whimsically enough in Burne-Jonesesques. And so it came that his first half-year as an artist saw him pouring out work of a quality never before even hinted at as being latent in him. * * * * * Such then was the state of affairs when, with the inevitable black portfolio containing work really worth looking at under his arm, the young fellow in his twenty-first year was to be led by Vallance into the inestimable good fortune of meeting a man who was to bring his achievement into the public eye and champion his interests at every hand his life long.