The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (4.1895)

The End of an Episode

By Evelyn Sharp

lan Drew, the novelist, had gone blind. And the ladies

who had come to inquire after him sat and discussed the
matter over their afternoon tea. Most of the people from the
country round who had come with the same object had gone away
> baffled by his uncompromising attitude ; for Allan Drew had
never cultivated the particular set of social emotions which were
demanded by his present Situation ; and he had no intention of
helping the people, who bored him, to get through a formula of
compassion that he did not want. So this afternoon he sat and
listened in silence while his visitors talked with conviction about a
trial of which they had not the least experience.

“It is difficult, sometimes, to understand the workings of

Providence, but-” said the Rector’s wife. In spiteof the years

of practice that she must have had in the work of consolation, she
did not seem to be getting on very well now.

To the novelist she appeared to be wavering between an
inclination to treat him like a villager who had to be patronised
and a Parish Councillor who had to be propitiated.

“ Almost impossible, yes,” said Allan Drew, and he shifted his
position wearily.

“ I think Fate is sometimes kinder than she seems at first sight,”

said