him.

Reginald, too, seemed to be in a turmoil of work. Ernest had little
chance to speak to him. And to drop even a hint of his plans between the
courses at breakfast would have been desecration.

Sunset followed sunset, night followed night. The stripling April had
made room for the lady May. The play was almost completed in Ernest's
mind, and he thought, with a little shudder, of the physical travail of
the actual writing. He felt that the transcript from brain to paper
would demand all his powers. For, of late, his thoughts seemed strangely
evanescent; they seemed to run away from him whenever he attempted to
seize them.

The day was glad with sunshine, and he decided to take a long walk in
the solitude of the Palisades, to steady hand and nerve for the final
task.

He told Reginald of his intention, but met with little response.
Reginald's face was wan and bore the peculiar pallor of one who had
worked late at night.

"You must be frightfully busy?" Ernest asked, with genuine concern.

"So I am," Reginald replied. "I always work in a white heat. I am
restless, nervous, feverish, and can find no peace until I have given
utterance to all that clamours after birth."

"What is it that is so engaging your mind, the epic of the French
Revolution?"

"Oh, no. I should never have undertaken that. I haven't done a stroke of
work on it for several weeks. In fact, ever since Walkham called, I
simply couldn't. It seemed as if a rough hand had in some way destroyed
the web of my thought. Poetry in the writing is like red hot glass
before the master-blower has fashioned it into birds and trees and
strange fantastic shapes. A draught, caused by the opening of a door may
distort it. But at present I am engaged upon more important work. I am
modelling a vessel not of fine-spun glass, but of molten gold."

"You make me exceedingly anxious to know what you have in store for us.
It seems to me you have reached a point where even you can no longer
surpass yourself."

Reginald smiled. "Your praise is too generous, yet it warms like
sunshine. I will confess that my conception is unique. It combines with
the ripeness of my technique the freshness of a second spring."

Ernest was bubbling with anticipated delights. His soul responded to
Reginald's touch as a harp to the winds. "When," he cried, "shall we be
privileged to see it?"

Reginald's eyes were already straying back to his writing table. "If the
gods are propitious,"