up half the night," said Victor simply, "from
living in places where one had best sleep in the day; but I am sure if I
were a poet, I should delight in the night for its own sake."

There was something curious in the feeling of deference with which Heron
regarded the young poet. He considered Blanchet as something not quite
mortal, or at all events, masculine; something entitled to the homage
one gives to a woman and the enthusiasm we feel to a spiritual teacher.
Blanchet did not seem to him exactly like a man; rather like one of
those creatures compounded of fire and dew whom we read of in legend and
mythology. The feeling was not that of awe, because Blanchet was young
and good-looking, and wore a dress coat and white tie, and it is
impossible to have a feeling of awe for a man with a white tie. It was a
feeling of delicate consideration and devotion. Had some rude person
jostled against or otherwise insulted the poet as they passed along,
Victor would have felt it his duty to interpose and resent the affront
as promptly as if Minola Grey or Lucy Money were the object of the
insult. To his unsophisticated colonial mind the poet was the sweet
feminine voice of the literary grammar.

Heron occupied two or three rooms on the drawing-room floor of one of
the streets running out of Piccadilly. He paid, perhaps, more for his
accommodation than a prudent young man beginning the world all over
again would have thought necessary; but Heron could not come down all at
one step from his dignity as a sort of colonial governor, and he
considered it, in a manner, due to the honor of England's administrative
system, that he should maintain a gentlemanlike appearance in London
while still engaged in fighting his battle--the battle which had not
begun yet. Besides, as he had himself told Minola Grey, his troubles
thus far were not money troubles. He had means enough to live like a
modest gentleman even in London, provided he did not run into
extravagant tastes of any kind, and he had saved, because he had had no
means of spending it, a good deal of his salary while in the St.
Xavier's his lodgings; and his condition seemed to Blanchet, when they
entered the drawing-room together, and the servant was seen to be
quietly busy in anticipating his master's wants, to be that of an easy
opulence whereof, in the case of young bachelors, he had little personal
knowledge. It was very impressive for the moment. Genius, and
originality, and the