For myself, I would listen always with admiration. Always with an admiration that I have never since recaptured. And if there were admirablenesses that did not seem to me to fit in with the given scene I could at least, at the end of the reading, say with perfect sincerity: “Wonderful! _How_ you do things!...” before beginning on: “But don’t you perhaps think....” And I really do not believe that either my Collaborator or myself ever made an objection which was not jointly sustained. That is not quarrels. When I last looked through the bound proofs of _Romance_ I was struck with the fact that whereas my Collaborator eliminated almost every word of action and eighty percent of the conversations by myself, I supplied almost all the descriptive passages of the really collaborated parts--and such softer sentiment as was called for. And my Collaborator let them get through. All this took place long ago; most of it in another century during another reign; whilst an earlier but not less haughty and proud generation were passing away. F. M. F. _The Nature of a Crime_ _The Nature of a Crime_ I You are, I suppose, by now in Rome. It is very curious how present to me are both Rome and yourself. There is a certain hill--you, and that is the curious part of it, will never go there--yet, yesterday, late in the evening, I stood upon its summit and you came walking from a place below. It is always midday there: the seven pillars of the Forum stand on high, their capitals linked together, and form one angle of a square. At their bases there lie some detritus, a broken marble lion, and I think but I am not certain, the bronze she-wolf suckling the two bronze children. Your dress brushed the herbs: it was grey and tenuous: I suppose you do not know how you look when you are unconscious of being looked at? But I looked at you for a long time--at my You. I saw your husband yesterday at the club and he said that you would not be returning till the end of April. When I got back to my chambers I found a certain letter. I will tell you about it afterwards--but I forbid you to look at the end of what I am writing now. There is a piece of news coming: I would break it to you if I could--but there is no way of breaking the utterly unexpected. Only, if you read this through you will gather from the tenor, from the tone of my thoughts, a little inkling, a small preparation for my disclosure. Yes: it is a “disclosure.”