ad just told me that he did not consider it right of
me under all the circumstances to hold Lizzie any longer to her
engagement, and that I ought to go away and give her a chance of
forgetting me, and I had agreed with him. I was alone in the world, and
heavily in debt. Altogether things seemed about as hopeless as they
could be, and I don't mind confessing to you now that I had made up my
mind to blow out my brains that very evening. I had loaded my revolver,
and it lay before me on the desk. My hand was toying with it when I
heard a faint scratching at the door. I paid no attention at first, but
it grew more persistent, and at length, to stop the faint noise which
excited me more than I could account for, I rose and opened the door and
_it_ walked in.

"It perched itself upon the corner of my desk beside the loaded pistol,
and sat there bolt upright looking at me; and I, pushing back my chair,
sat looking at it. And there came a letter telling me that a man of
whose name I had never heard had been killed by a cow in Melbourne, and
that under his will a legacy of three thousand pounds fell into the
estate of a distant relative of my own who had died peacefully and
utterly insolvent eighteen months previously, leaving me his sole heir
and representative, and I put the revolver back into the drawer."

"Do you think Pyramids would come and stop with me for a week?" I asked,
reaching over to stroke the cat as it lay softly purring on Dick's knee.

"Maybe he will some day," replied Dick in a low voice, but before the
answer came--I know not why--I had regretted the jesting words.

"I came to talk to him as though he were a human creature," continued
Dick, "and to discuss things with him. My last play I regard as a
collaboration; indeed, it is far more his than mine."

I should have thought Dick mad had not the cat been sitting there before
me with its eyes looking into mine. As it was, I only grew more
interested in his tale.

"It was rather a cynical play as I first wrote it," he went on, "a
truthful picture of a certain corner of society as I saw and knew it.
From an artistic point of view I felt it was good; from the box-office
standard it was doubtful. I drew it from my desk on the third evening
after Pyramids' advent, and read it through. He sat on the arm of the
chair and looked over the pages as I turned them.

"It was the best thing I had ever written. Insight into life ran through
every line, I fo