"I'm afraid my story hasn't the merit of novelty," he said, candidly. "After you left school I remained, as you know. Then my parents died—within a few months of each other—and I found myself a well-provided orphan. When I say well-provided, I mean that I had an income of three hundred a year, and one can always live comfortably on six pounds a week, if not extravagant. Being thus independent of the world, the flesh, and the devil, meaning thereby the employer, the publisher, and the critic, I went in for writing poetry. It didn't pay, of course, this being the age of sensational literature; but verse manufacturing amused me, and I wandered all over England and the Continent in a desultory sort of way. A kind of grand tour in the poet line, midway between the poverty of Goldsmith and the luxury of Byron. I published a book of poems and the critics abused it—found plenty of faults and no virtues. Well, I was wrathful at this new massacre of the literary innocents and fled to the land of Egypt—in plain English I went down to Ventnor in the Isle of Wight. There I met Her—"
"With a large 'H,' of course," murmured Mr. Fanks, sympathetically.
"For the second time. I then—"
"Ah! May I ask where you met her for the first time?"
"Oh, in some other place," said Roger, evasively; "but that's got nothing to do with the subject. The first time we met—well, it was the first time."
"I didn't think it was the second, fond lover. But I understand the second time was the critical one."
"Exactly! It was last August," said Axton, speaking rapidly, so as to give Fanks no further opportunity of interrupting. "I was, as I have stated, at Ventnor, with the idea of writing a drama—Shakespearean, of course—Elizabethan style, you understand, with a dash of modern cynicism, and fin de siècle flippancy in it. Wandering about Ventnor, I came across Judith Varlins."
"For the second time of asking—I mean meeting," interpolated Fanks, lightly. "So her name was Judith. Heroic name, suggestive of queenly woman, dark-browed Cleopatra, and all that sort of thing. I picture to myself a grand Semiramis."
Roger shook his head.
"No; she was not a handsome woman. Tall, graceful, dark-browed, if you like, but not pretty."