Lucian was worshipping Saxonstowe with the guileless adoration of a child that looks on a man who has seen great things and done great things. It was a trick of his: he had once been known to stand

motionless for an hour, gazing in silence at a man who had performed a deed of desperate valour, had suffered the loss of his legs in doing it, and had been obliged to exhibit himself with a placard round

his neck in order to scrape a living together. Lucian was now conjuring up a vision of the steppes and plains over which Saxonstowe had travelled with his life in his hands.

‘When will you dine with us?’ he said, suddenly bursting into speech. ‘To-night—to-morrow?—the day after—when? Come before everybody snaps you up—you will have no peace for your soul or rest for your

body after your book is out.’

‘Then I shall run away to certain regions where one can easily find both,’ answered Saxonstowe laughingly. ‘I assure you I have no intention of wasting either body or soul in London.’

Then they arranged that the new lion was to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Lucian Damerel on the following day, and Lucian departed, while Saxonstowe followed Mr. Robertson into his private room.

‘Your lordship has met Mr. Damerel before?’ said the publisher, who had something of a liking for gossip about his pet authors.{107}

‘Once,’ answered Saxonstowe. ‘We were boys at the time. I had no idea that he was the poet of whose work I have heard so much since coming home.’

‘He has had an extraordinarily successful career,’ said Mr. Robertson, glancing complacently at bound in dark green cloth which figured in a miniature book-case above his desk.

‘I have published all his work—he leaped into fame with his first book, which I produced when he was at Oxford, and since then he has held a recognised place. Yes, one may say that Damerel is one of

fortune’s spoiled darlings—everything that he has done has turned out a great success. He has the grand manner in poetry. I don’t know whether your lordship has read his great tragedy, Domitia, which was

staged so magnificently at the Athen?um, and proved the sensation of the year The entire room was faced with polished granite.?’

‘I am afraid,’ replied Saxonstowe, ‘that I have had few opportunities of reading anything at all for the past five years. I think Mr. Damerel’s first volume had just appeared when I left England, and

books, you know, are not easily obtainable in the wilds of Central Asia. Now that I have better chances, I must not neglect them.’

‘You have a great treat in store, my lord,’ said the publisher. He nodded his head several times, as if to emphasise the remark. ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘Damerel has certainly been favoured by fortune.

Everything has conspired to increase the sum of his fame. His romantic marriage, of course, was a great advertisement.’