Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even had time to read it; he had gone to pieces in consequence of news requiring—as on precipitate reflexion he judged—that he should catch the night-mail to Paris. He had had a telegram from Gwendolen Erme in answer to his letter offering to fly to her aid. I knew already about Gwendolen Erme; I had never seen her, but I had my ideas, which were mainly to the effect that Corvick would marry her if her mother would only die. That lady seemed now in a fair way to oblige him; after some dreadful mistake about a climate or a “cure” she had suddenly collapsed on the return from abroad. Her daughter, unsupported and alarmed, desiring to make a rush for home but hesitating at the risk, had accepted our friend’s assistance, and it was my secret belief that at sight of him Mrs. Erme would pull round. His own belief was scarcely to be called secret; it discernibly at any rate differed from mine. He had showed me Gwendolen’s photograph with the remark that she wasn’t pretty but was awfully interesting; she had published at the age of nineteen a novel in three volumes, “Deep Down,” about which, in _The Middle_, he had been really splendid. He appreciated my present eagerness and undertook that the periodical in question should do no less; then at the last, with his hand on the door, he said to me: “Of course you’ll be all right, you know.” Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: “I mean you won’t be silly.” “Silly—about Vereker! Why what do I ever find him but awfully clever?” “Well, what’s that but silly? What on earth does ‘awfully clever’ mean? For God’s sake try to get _at_ him. Don’t let him suffer by our arrangement. Speak of him, you know, if you can, as _I_ should have spoken of him.” I wondered an instant. “You mean as far and away the biggest of the lot—that sort of thing?” Corvick almost groaned. “Oh you know, I don’t put them back to back that way; it’s the infancy of art! But he gives me a pleasure so rare; the sense of”—he mused a little—“something or other.” I wondered again. “The sense, pray, of want?” “My dear man, that’s just what I want _you_ to say!”