coal-scuttle was, he first saw the immortal face of Helen in
Leuce.

Here, all that beautiful world of thought lay open to the terrific
invasion of things. His dreams refused to stand out with sufficient
distinctness from a background of coloured bindings, plate glass and
mahogany. They were liable at any moment to be broken by the violent
contours of customers. A sight of Helen in Leuce could be obtained
only by dint of much concentrated staring at the clock; and as often
as not Mr. Rickman's eye dropt its visionary freight on encountering
the cashier's eye in its passage from the clock to the paper.

But (as he reflected with some humour) though Mr. Rickman's ideas so
frequently miscarried, owing to that malignant influence, his genius,
like Nature irresistible and indestructible, compelled him perpetually
to bring forth. Exposed on his little dais or platform, in hideous
publicity, he suffered the divine labour and agony of creation. He was
the slave of his passion and his hour.

CHAPTER IV

A wave of heat broke from the pillar-stove and spread through the
shop, strewing the heavier smells like a wrack behind it. And through
it all, with every swing of the great mahogany doors, there stole into
his young senses a something delicious and disturbing, faintly
discernible as the Spring.

He thrust his work from him, tilted back his chair at a dangerous
angle, and began reviewing his engagements for the coming Bank
Holiday.

He was only three and twenty, and at three and twenty an infinite
measure of life can be pressed into the great three days. He saw in
fancy the procession of the hours, the flight of the dreams, of all
the gorgeous intellectual pageants that move through the pages of
_Saturnalia_. For in ninety-two Savage Keith Rickman was a little poet
about town, a cockney poet, the poet not only of neo-classic drama,
but of green suburban Saturday noons, and flaming Saturday nights, and
of a great many things besides. He had made his plans long beforehand,
and was prepared to consign to instant perdition the person or thing
that should interfere with them. Good Friday morning, an hour's
cycling before breakfast in Regent's Park, by way of pumping some air
into his lungs, then, ten hours at least of high Parnassian leisure,
of dalliance in Academic shades; he saw himself wooing some reluctant
classic, or, far more likely, flirting with his own capricious and
bewildering muse. (In a world of prose it