"Triple ass that I was," he said over and over again after he met her. "I sent out 'Lords of the Ghostland' when I knew nothing. Had I but waited till now I could have written a masterpiece. Instead of that I turned out a skeleton,—no meat, no truth, no insides."
This fretted him constantly.
"If I live long enough," he said, "I will undo 'The Philosophy of Disenchantment' and 'The Anatomy of Negation,' as well as 'Lords of the Ghostland,' and epitomize all I have digested into a single volume and call it 'The History of God.' Then I will sing my Nunc dimittis, go to Adyar and put my pen at the service of Mrs. Besant."
It was a far step for the man who had once written, "There is no help here or anywhere." Years of study, reinforced by the chastening effect of thinking for another less practical and more highly strung than himself, had done much for him, but the increasing application of Theosophy to his daily life had done more. As far as he could, he made himself over—recognizing and combatting his weaknesses with heroic courage. Though the remnants of his fundamental fears remained and cropped up at unexpected times and places, they were modified to a remarkable degree. One could not anticipate them however, and occasionally they led to rather amusing results.
It was after a prolonged period of insomnia and a nervous breakdown, super-induced by circumstances entirely unconnected with Mr. Saltus, and after I had been in bed for weeks, that one of these lapses occurred. He was an angel during this trying time, rushing up to Covent Garden daily to get me peaches (a luxury in England) and taking his meals on a tray at my bedside, after which he read aloud to me as long as I cared to have him do so. It was after a peaceful evening passed in this way, that one of his fears reappeared for a moment, and in such a way that one with less understanding of his psychology would have been very angry.
Mr. Saltus' bed-room opened off my own, and it was our custom to leave the door ajar in case I should need something during the night. He was asleep and I was resting when a low "woof" came from the foot of my bed. Another "woof!" and then a growl followed. Toto was trained to be quiet and did not "woof" without cause. I sat up and listened. Light footsteps were audible from the drawing-room down stairs. I waited a moment or two to make sure, and then, speaking quite naturally but loudly enough to waken him, I said:—
"Get up, Snippsy. I think there are burglars down-stairs."
What followed was enough to frighten even the most hardened criminal. With a blood-curdling shriek, Mr. Saltus sprang from his bed, and slamming the door between our rooms locked it,—locking as well the other door giving on to the hallway. So unexpected was it, and so sudden, that it took me a moment to realize that instead of going to the rescue, he was, as he afterward admitted, curled up in bed, with the covering pulled over his head.
Somebody had to do something. Getting out of the bed I had not left for weeks, with Toto leading the way, I turned on the drawing-room lights from a switch, and tottered down stairs. The intruder was quite harmless,—a man who occupied a tiny pied-à-terre on the ground floor. He had mislaid his matches, and being on a friendly footing with us had, as he thought, come up noiselessly to help himself from our smoking-stand.
When with shaking legs I managed to get up the stairs again, Mr. Saltus met me on the landing. He had gained control of his nerves and was coming down to look after me. It was my hand which locked the door between our rooms that time, after calling him a "spineless jellyfish," an epithet which he had heard many times before and which always called forth the same reply:—