Chapter 6

A WEEK later, early in May, my glorified friend came up to town,
where, it may be veraciously recorded he was the king of the beasts
of the year. No advancement was ever more rapid, no exaltation
more complete, no bewilderment more teachable. His book sold but
moderately, though the article in THE EMPIRE had done unwonted
wonders for it; but he circulated in person to a measure that the
libraries might well have envied. His formula had been found - he
was a "revelation." His momentary terror had been real, just as
mine had been - the overclouding of his passionate desire to be
left to finish his work. He was far from unsociable, but he had
the finest conception of being let alone that I've ever met. For
the time, none the less, he took his profit where it seemed most to
crowd on him, having in his pocket the portable sophistries about
the nature of the artist's task. Observation too was a kind of
work and experience a kind of success; London dinners were all
material and London ladies were fruitful toil. "No one has the
faintest conception of what I'm trying for," he said to me, "and
not many have read three pages that I've written; but I must dine
with them first - they'll find out why when they've time." It was
rather rude justice perhaps; but the fatigue had the merit of being
a new sort, while the phantasmagoric town was probably after all
less of a battlefield than the haunted study. He once told me that
he had had no personal life to speak of since his fortieth year,
but had had more than was good for him before. London closed the
parenthesis and exhibited him in relations; one of the most
inevitable of these being that in which he found himself to Mrs.
Weeks Wimbush, wife of the boundless brewer and proprietress of the
universal menagerie. In this establishment, as everybody knows, on
occasions when the crush is great, the animals rub shoulders freely
with the spectators and the lions sit down for whole evenings with
the lambs.

It had been ominously clear to me from the first that in Neil
Paraday this lady, who, as all the world agreed, was tremendous
fun, considered that she had secured a prime attraction, a creature
of almost heraldic oddity. Nothing could exceed her enthusiasm
over her capture, and nothing could exceed the confused
apprehensions it excited in me. I had an instinctive fear of her
which I tried without effect to conceal from her victim, but which
I let her notice with perfect impunity. Paraday heeded it, but she
never did, for her conscience was that of a romping child. She was
a blind violent force to which I could attach no more idea of
responsibility than to the creaking of a sign in the wind. It was
difficult to say what she conduced to but circulation. She was