Rudd's rooms, so that he had plenty to choose from when an unstamped envelope forced thirst upon him.

It often happens that the first public-house having no stamps, one must go to another, and even another; and this was Rudd's uncomfortable experience on that eventful night. Not that he had any objection to public-houses when he was with a friend; but he had not yet learned to face alone a barmaid with the assurance that is one of the most admired traits of the perfect Londoner. Barmaids terrified Rudd, as, most of his life, he was terrified by the articulate and confident. In return he treated them as something more than ladies.

Three glasses of bitter beer was it necessary for Rudd to consume on this occasion before he could get the three penny stamps that his precious package seemed to demand. By this time he was a different Rudd from that who had written the apologetic letter. The national beverage had made him strong.

Hurrying home, for it was nearing midnight, at which hour his nearest box was cleared, he tore up the first letter and in a bold hand wrote another one. "My dear Voaden," he began without a tremor, and rattled on to the end in the same fine free way. This he hastened to post and was soon in bed and asleep.

He awoke next morning horror-struck at what he had done; but he had done it. There was no going back now. The great author of The Sea and the Stars had lost his Mr.

And yet had he? Rudd shivered as he remembered

that it is one thing to write "Voaden" so familiarly, and another to say it. No stimulant could becomingly help him there; and the day would surely come when he would have to face that ordeal.

He dressed in perplexity. What difficulties life presents!

CHAPTER XXV

IN WHICH THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS MORE

THAN ONCE

UDD was shown into Voaden's drawing-room, where Mrs. Voaden sat alone by the fire. She was occupied with some form of embroidery.

Mrs. Voaden was a large lady, with a placid humorous face, and she instantly made her guest at home. Her husband would be down directly, she said. He was always late. It was a habit with most men, and would continue to be until they tried their hands at cooking the dinner themselves, and took pride in having it ready to time, and then saw unpunctuality spoiling it. Still, clever people must be forgiven, she supposed. Her husband, at any rate, always expected to be forgiven, and often was. Novelists demanded preferential treatment and possibly deserved it, since it was their mission to beguile poor human nature and take people out of themselves. Anyway, whether they deserved it or not, they usually got it, in a way that grocers and bakers and artisans-the really useful fellows-did not.

So she ran on, half ironically, her busy fingers stitching the while.

It was a comfortable room, with a bright fire and plenty of easy-chairs and a few good water-colours. A portrait of Voaden, by some dashing new Gallicized hand, was over the mantelpiece. Rudd leaned back and listened luxuriously to this clever lady, who seemed at once to be so shrewdly outside the game and yet in it too.

What, she asked, was Rudd's particular ambition as a writer? She had seen some of his things-her husband had shown them to her, as he always did—and they were rather good, she thought, but lacking in courage. Rudd, she felt, should go more directly to life and not wear blinkers so steadily. Blinkers were a mistake. No need to tell everything; but one should be aware of it. She didn't want him to be another Zola, but his avoidance of facts was against his work. "But then you're so young," she said.

Rudd listened in a state of rapture. Her censure mattered nothing; the delight was to be criticized and discussed by a wise woman of the world, such as this, at once so kind and so searching and the wife of the great Voaden.

"The point is," she continued, "what do you want to be? Do you want to be a novelist?"

Rudd thought that he did, some day, but he seemed incapable now of any but short flights.

"You haven't any very strong ambition?" she asked. He thought not. That was one of his great defects.

"It may come," she replied. "You look like developing late. It seems to me that what you want to do now is not to write at all, but observe and collect. You're at a hospital, aren't you?"

Rudd said that he was-at St. Stephen's.

"Then what a chance you have!" she replied. “Experience washing right up to your feet, day and night. If you take my advice, you won't worry about your writing at all, but be thorough in your living."

What magnificent counsel! thought Rudd.

"But of course my husband may tell you differently, and he knows better than I do," she said.

Not he, thought Rudd, and at this moment Voaden entered full of apologies, and dinner soon began.

Voaden and Rudd drank claret; Mrs. Voaden water. She was at least ten years older than her husband, Rudd guessed, and his attitude to her was very pretty and amusing-half solicitude and half gentle chaff. He called her Sheila.

The talk was mainly literary, and a great many authors were passed under review. Rudd observed that Mrs. Voaden's estimate often differed totally from her husband's, and that to this Voaden had no objection. They agreed to differ. Brought up, as Rudd had been, in a house where the only opinion was the male one, this new situation filled him with surprise. Not only was Voaden not angry about it at the table, but there were no signs that he would be angry afterwards, in private, when such differences are usually settled. How odd it all was!