In truth, I was but a degenerate disciple, and moreover unfaithful. For Owen and I had sent the great man a letter for the New Year, protesting allegiance, and had actually received a reply, which, considering it had almost moved Owen to tears, I had allowed him to keep. He regarded it with the kind of veneration that, in earlier days, a devout pilgrim may have regarded some relic of a saint. I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he wore it, tied up in a little bag, somewhere beneath his clothes. Really it had been quite decent; though that a man of world-wide fame, who must have been besieged by communications of all kinds and from all sorts of persons, should have found time to understand and reply kindly to the epistle of a couple of youngsters, far away in a benighted island, I’m afraid did not strike me then as quite the wonderful thing it was. The letter, however, was not to me, and Owen, at all events, had found it wonderful enough. In spite of my share in the matter, the spirit of our enterprise had been Owen’s. The epistle we had concocted had expressed Owen, and Owen alone, and it was delightfully intelligent of the master to have seen behind its crudity something worth encouraging. He had actually asked us――that is Owen――to write again――not at once and under the immediate influence of his letter, but in a month or two. And Owen had written again. By that time I had had the sense to recognize that I was only a shadow in this matter, and to give him a free field. He had waited the full two months, which I, had I felt his enthusiasm, could never have done, and had then written the second letter. This letter I had insisted must be private. I had refused to take any part in its composition, or even to read it when it was finished, though Owen had told me all that was in it――a complete account of himself, of his father’s position, of his own acquirements and abilities, his prospects, his ideals, ending up with a petition for advice as to the direction his studies ought to take, and as to what career lay open to him. The reply to this effusion had not yet come or I should have heard of it, but I hadn’t the slightest doubt that when it did turn up Owen would follow its instructions minutely, down to the smallest particulars, even were that to entail the wearing of peas in his shoes. It was the sort of thing that was completely beyond me. I could not have borne to admit, even to myself, that anybody was so much my superior as all that. And then, very softly, at the bottom of my soul, I preferred “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to “Anna Karénine.” I not only preferred it, but I was sure it was a work of far finer genius. Of course I was always sure that the things I happened to prefer were far finer, but in this particular instance I have not altered my opinion. * * * * *