“Oh, bother good!  One’s friends like one as one is; the outside public hate one or scoff at one as they please.”

“Well, I hope I shall always be your friend,” I replied, “but you will yet be forced to see, Oscar, that everyone grows tired of holding up an empty sack.”

“Frank, you insult me.”

“I don’t mean to; I’m sorry; I shall never be so brutally frank again; but you had to hear the truth for once.”

“Then, Frank, you only cared for me in so far as I agreed with you?”

“Oh, that’s not fair,” I replied.  “I have tried with all my strength to prevent you committing soul-suicide, but if you are resolved on it, I can’t prevent you.  I must draw away.  I can do no good.”

“Then you won’t help me for the rest of the winter?”

“Of course I will,” I replied, “I shall do all I promised and more; but there’s a limit now, and till now the only limit was my power, not my will.”

It was at Napoule a few days later that an incident occurred which gave me to a certain extent a new sidelight on Oscar’s nature by showing just what he thought of me.  I make no scruple of setting forth his opinion here in its entirety, though the confession took place after a futile evening when he had talked to M——­ of great houses in England and the great people he had met there.  The talk had evidently impressed M——­ as much as it had bored me.  I must first say that Oscar’s bedroom was separated from mine by a large sitting-room we had in common.  As a rule I worked in my bedroom in the mornings and he spent a great deal of time out of doors.  On this especial morning, however, I had gone into the sitting-room early to write some letters.  I heard him get up and splash about in his bath:  shortly afterwards he must have gone into the next room, which was M——­’s, for suddenly he began talking to him in a loud voice from one room to the other, as if he were carrying on a conversation already begun, through the open door.

“Of course it’s absurd of Frank talking of social position or the great people of English society at all.  He never had any social position to be compared with mine!” (The petulant tone made me smile; but what Oscar said was true:  nor did I ever pretend to have such a position.)

“He had a house in Park Lane and owned The Saturday Review and had a certain power; but I was the centre of every party, the most honoured guest everywhere, at Clieveden and Taplow Court and Clumber.  The difference was Frank was proud of meeting Balfour while Balfour was proud of meeting me:  d’ye see?” (I was so interested I was unconscious of any indiscretion in listening:  it made me smile to hear that I was proud of meeting Arthur Balfour:  it would never have occurred to me that I should be proud of that:  still no doubt Oscar was right in a general way).

“When Frank talks of literature, he amuses me:  he pretends to bring new standards into it; he does:  he brings America to judge Oxford and London, much like bringing Macedon or Boeotia to judge Athens—­quite ridiculous!  What can Americans know about English literature?...