It was not for him to understand the words that the poet and his father recited with such a holy submission; they had no meanings for his unaccustomed ears; but the dominion of the poet’s presence, which sprang from that which was now upon his face, the wonderful serenity of that sightless aspect filled the young man with an awe and a credulity which he could not recognize as belonging to himself. “I am going wrong,” he would say in his perplexity as he went his ways about the great city, “and, of course, they are as wrong as they can be--yet the marvellous thing is that they make you feel that all the world is wrong, and that they are the only reasonable people in it!” One evening, after Jimmy Dodson had sat in a kind of entrancement for several hours while the poet had recited many passages, he was moved to ask with dry lips, “I say, old boy, Homer and Milton were blind, weren’t they?” “Tradition has it so,” said the poet, and his sightless aspect was suffused with that secret and beautiful smile that had come to haunt poor Dodson in his dreams. “But what is ‘tradition’ but an adumbration of the light that never was?” On the evening that the last line of the poem had been passed for the press with an astonishing thoroughness and celerity by the co-operation of two minds which had to be almost independent of the use of the eyes, the poet committed these final pages to the care of his faithful emissary with further injunctions for their prosperity in the great world out of doors. “Let our little treatise have reticence, chastity, sobriety,” he said. “I wish you could see the binding I have chosen,” said Jimmy Dodson. “Octavius calls it very chaste indeed--you can’t think what an interest Octavius is taking in the publication. Octavius made one error in his life, which we will not refer to now, but he has turned out trumps over this. He would give his ears to know the name of the author!” “That is a secret you are pledged to respect,” said William Jordan in his voice of soft irony. “You can be quite easy about that, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson. “Wild horses shall not drag it from me; and, of course, there is not a soul in the world who would ever suspect that the author is you.” “I trust you,” said the poet simply. “And there is only one further charge with which I shall tax our friendship. I shall ask you to collect all the papers that bear the impress of my hand, and lodge them at the English Museum, in the custody of the English nation.” James Dodson contrived to dissemble his bewildered surprise. “Of course I will do so, old boy,” he said gravely and promptly. “I will make a parcel of the manuscript now. It is too late to take it round there to-night; but the first thing to-morrow I will take an hour off from the office, and I will carry it to the English Museum myself.” “Thank you, thank you,” said the poet. “I thank you in the name of truth and of ages yet to be.” LV