HIS LATE MATURITY OF MIND 195 



Fleeming had no tact ; he belied the opinion then. 

 I remember perfectly how, so soon as we could 

 get together, he began his attack : ' You may 

 have grounds of quarrel with me ; you have none 

 against Mrs. Jenkin ; and before I say another 

 word, I want you to promise you will come to 

 her house as usual.' An interview thus begun 

 could have but one ending : if the quarrel were 

 the fault of both, the merit of the reconciliation 

 was entirely Fleeming's. 



When our intimacy first began, coldly enough. His late 

 accidentally enough on his part, he had still some- of mind. 

 thing of the Puritan, something of the inhuman 

 narrowness of the good youth. It fell from him 

 slowly, year by year, as he continued to ripen, 

 and grow milder, and understand more gener- 

 ously the mingled characters of men. In the 

 early days he once read me a bitter lecture ; and 

 I remember leaving his house in a fine spring 

 afternoon, with the physical darkness of despair 

 upon my eyesight. Long after he made me a 

 formal retractation of the sermon and a formal 

 apology for the pain he had inflicted ; adding 

 drolly, but truly, ' You see, at that time I was 

 so much younger than you ! ' And yet even in 

 those days there was much to learn from him; 

 and above all, his fine spirit of piety, bravely and 

 trustfully accepting life, and his singular delight 

 in the heroic. 



