As it is natural for a leader to crave for followers, so it is natural that he should bear much from those who seem disposed to follow him. Stuart, without analyzing his motives, had made many efforts to attach the Vanes to himself. He had tried to melt the adamantine selfishness of the elder by generous praise of all in him that was possible to praise. He had tried to fan what little sparks of individuality he had detected in the younger. He had shut his eyes as much as he could to their humiliating vanity and meanness, vices which he hoped might exhale in the sunshine of a little success. Now he was moved to despair of them. It was evident that the real attraction for Egerton in the project he had embraced so feverishly was not the companionship of congenial minds, but the notoriety conferred by reporters. His soul thirsted not after the praise of the judicious, but after the paragraphs of Fleet Street. Regretfully Alistair made up his mind to abandon the half-formed scheme, unless the two brothers could be persuaded to abandon him. The participation of such a man as Egerton Vane would degrade any movement in which he played a part to the level of his own vanity. It did not deserve even to be called vanity--it was vulgarity. Instead of the vanity of genius, it was the vulgarity of the charlatan. Happily unconscious of the reflections passing through Lord Alistair’s mind, the Chevalier Vane was occupying his mind with the problem of his neglected volume, which Lady Alistair had laid aside. The poet of the Catholic renascence was anxious to read some of his work to the company, unworthy though they seemed to feel themselves of such a privilege, and he began forcibly turning the conversation towards the end in view. “The new poetry will be distinguished from the old by its form not less than its spirit,” he proclaimed magisterially. “I have come to the conclusion to discard the sonnet in favor of the acrostic.” (There was an acrostic in the “Rosary of Twilight.”) “Form is the essence of art, and the acrostic represents form in its severest limitations.” “Form _is_ art,” flashed Alistair, who saw through the visitor’s strategy, and felt maliciously disposed to balk him. It had always been an honourable understanding among the Decadents that they were to listen to each other’s poems and look at each other’s pictures, as some slight mutual compensation for the deafness and blindness of the middle class. But it seemed scarcely fair to extend the benefit of this arrangement to the poetry of the Catholic renascence. Vane blinked, but recovered himself promptly. “That is what I said. Form is art or its essence. For that reason it ought not to be concealed. In the acrostic form takes its right place as the governing condition of the whole.” Wickham dutifully came to his brother’s reinforcement.