"No, no; you haven't learnt any of those tunes from me. My Muse wears a straighter and a longer petticoat; and I flatter myself she has the manners of an English gentlewoman."
Rickman blushed painfully this time. He had no reply to make to that.
"I didn't mean," Fielding went on, "to talk to you about your Saturnalia. But On Harcombe Hill, and The Song of Confession—those are great poems."
Rickman looked up, startled out of his self-possession by the unexpected words and the sudden curious vibration in the voice that uttered them. Yet he could hardly realize that Fielding was praising him.
"They moved me," said Fielding, "as nothing moves me now, except the Psalms of David. I have been a great poet, as poets go nowadays; but" (he smiled radiantly) "the painful conviction is forced upon me that you will be a greater—if you live. I wanted to tell you this, because nobody else is likely to find it out until you're dead. You may make up your mind to that, my friend."
"I had made up my mind to many things. But they don't matter—now."
Fielding ignored the compliment. "Has any one found it out? Except yourself?"
"Only one person."
"Man or woman?"
He thought of Maddox, that irresponsible person. "A man. And perhaps he hardly counts."