During those years Severn and I contrived to meet fairly often--sometimes in town and less often, when Helen was away, at the End House. If ever I were tempted to think the worst of him, I should only need to ask myself the question: Why _should_ he have troubled to help me as much as he did? I know, of course, what his reply would be--a suave smile and an assurance that he did it merely for the pleasure he got in doing it, like any other voluptuary. I am to suppose, therefore, that he voluptuously interviewed the editor of the _Messenger_ and persuaded him that I was worth a sub-editorship. "My dear fellow," he told me once, "I really do what I like, whatever it happens to be. You'd be surprised if you knew what I was capable of.... For God's sake, don't think of me as a sort of maundering philanthropist." All this time he was rising rapidly in his profession. He loved publicity for its own sake, and he specialized in cases that gave him it--divorce, criminal, and civil. One year, it was freely rumoured, he earned over fifty thousand pounds. At the same time in the House he had made a first-class reputation, and was almost certain of the Solicitor-Generalship when his party came into office. He had had marvellous, almost incredible good fortune, and _he kept on having it_. He couldn't write a book without it going into seven editions. He couldn't dabble in art without exhibiting at the Paris Salon, and, under a pseudonym, attracting a considerable amount of attention. A newspaper friend of mine once summed him up rather neatly. We were speculating on which of his many activities represented his real natural bent. "All of them and none of them," was my friend's enigmatic opinion. "He's just born to be one thing and one thing only--a _success_. It's only an accident that he paints, writes, and harangues a jury. If he'd been a rag-and-bone man down the Mile End Road he'd have been just as big a success.... While other men, perhaps far better and just as clever, are born to be failures...."