id you stay at home that evening?"

"No,--not all the evening."

"What friends are they you go to, when you are out at night, Harriet?"

"Oh, some relations of the Colchester people.--I suppose you've been
spending most of your time in Kennington since Sunday?"

"I haven't left home. In fact, I've been very busy. I've just finished
some work that has occupied me for nearly a year."

After all, he could not refrain from speaking of it, though he had made
up his mind not to do so.

"Work? What work?" asked Harriet, with the suspicious look which came
into her grey eyes whenever she heard something she could not
understand.

"Some writing. I've written a play."

"A play? Will it be acted?"

"Oh no, it isn't meant for acting."

"What's the good of it then?"

"It's written in verse. I shall perhaps try to get it published."

"Shall you get money for it?"

"That is scarcely likely. In all probability I shall not be able to get
it printed at all."

"Then what's the good of it?" repeated Harriet, still suspicious, and a
little contemptuous.

"It has given me pleasure, that's all."

Julian was glad when at length he could take his leave. Waymark
received him with a pleased smile, and much questioning.

"Why did you keep it such a secret? I shall try my hand at a play some
day or other, but, as you can guess, the material will scarcely be
sought in Gibbon. It will be desperately modern, and possibly not
altogether in accordance with the views of the Lord Chamberlain. What's
the time? Four o'clock. We'll have a cup of coffee and then fall to.
I'm eager to hear your 'deep-chested music,' your 'hollow oes and aes.'"

The reading took some three hours; Waymark smoked a vast number of
pipes the while, and was silent till the close. Then he got up from his
easy-chair, took a step forward, and held out his hand. His face shone
with the frankest enthusiasm. He could not express himself with
sufficient vehemence. Julian sat with the manuscript rolled up in his
hands, on his face a glow of delight.

"It's very kind of you to speak in this way," he faltered at length.

"Kind! How the deuce should I speak? But come, we will have this off to
a publisher's forth with. Have you any ideas for the next work?"

"Yes; but so daring that they hardly bear putting into words."

"Try the effect on me."

"I have thought," said Julian, with embarrassment, "of a long poem--an
Epic. Virgil wrote of the founding of Rome; her dis