in a
whirl of distracting thought.

When the mysterious Mr. P. quitted the room, Henry felt that his
lightly-chosen epithet was more suitable than ever. But it was less of
the man he thought, as he now unconsciously imitated him in pacing his
room, than of the ideas he had enunciated; these had instantly become
detached from their originator and boiled up in Henry's mind with all
the lees of youthful doubts and questionings that had been lying there.
The mental ferment had a harassing effect on him. Almost for the first
time in his life he felt a strange desire to turn inside out his
spiritual nature and find what it consisted of. And the next instant the
thought was madness to him.

"I said to him that we are told to love one another," he reflected,
setting his teeth defiantly. "If we did, then evil would cease out of
the world. So the religion which teaches this must be right. But we
don't do so--he was right there--and if our natures are not capable of
this love, what profits the advice? He's no fool; but the way seems very
dark. I half wish he hadn't touched the subject."

As these thoughts were coursing through Henry's mind, the strains of a
'cello, soothing and sensuous, came from the room above, adding a
dramatic touch to a memorable experience, and reminding him startlingly
that he had never spoken a word to Mr. P. about his music.

The lateness of the hour surprised Henry, who threw himself down in a
chair and stared blankly at the dying embers in the grate, while the
musician sounded with exquisite touch the closing bars of a nocturne.

CHAPTER XVI

DRIFTING

WHEN Henry's review of "Ashes" appeared, it was not so violent an attack
on the author as he had meant it to be. Indeed, he was half-ashamed when
he read in print what he had written about that much-discussed book; in
certain passages it sounded suspiciously like Mr. P.'s own phrases.

"We shall admit that it is no business of art to concern itself with
morals." Where did we hear the words before? "It is, alas, only too true
that life is not all sweetness: it has more than a dash of bitter." A
platitude; and borrowed at that. "But we must not suppose that only
beauty is true and artistic: ugliness may still be of the very essence
of art." Really, the fiddler fellow might have done the review himself.
No doubt, when he read it, he felt that it was mainly his.

Henry had yet to