here was that
divine solitude? Where were those long days of nebulous conception?
Where the days when he removed himself, as it were, and watched his
full-orbed creations careering in the intellectual void? The days when
Keith Rickman was as a god? He was hardly aware how fast they were
vanishing already; and where would they be in two months' time? It
was on his tragedy that he based his hopes for his future; the future,
in which Flossie had no part. He knew that the plea of art sounded
weak before the inexorable claims of nature; he felt that something
ought to be sacrificed to the supreme passion; but he couldn't give up
his tragedy. He was consumed by two indomitable passions; and who was
to say which of them was supreme? Still, tragedies in blank verse were
a luxury; and Flossie had more than once pointed out to him he
couldn't afford luxuries. He would sit up working on the tragedy till
long past midnight; and when he woke in the morning his sense of guilt
could not have been greater if he had been indulging in the most
hateful orgies. But you can't burn even genius at both ends; and his
paying work began to suffer. Jewdwine complained that it was not up to
his usual level. Maddox had returned several articles. So at last he
stuffed his tragedy into a drawer to wait there for a diviner hour.
"That would have been a big expensive job," he said to himself. "I
suppose it's possible to put as good work into the little things that
pay; but I shall have to cut myself in pieces." That was what he was
doing now; changing his gold into copper as fast as he could, so many
pennies for one sovereign. Nobody was cheated. He knew that in his
talent (his mere journalistic talent) there was a genius that no
amount of journalism had as yet subdued. But he had an awful vision of
the future, when he saw himself swallowed up body and soul in
journalism. The gods were dead; but there were still men and columns.

That would be the inevitable surrender to reality. To have no part in
the triumph of the poetic legions; but to march with the rank and
file, to a detestable music not his own; a mere mercenary ingloriously
fighting in a foreign cause.

To Jewdwine, Jewdwine once incorruptible, it seemed that Rickman was
preparing himself very suitably for the new campaign. But Maddox
mourned as he returned those articles; and when he heard of the
approaching marriage which explained them he was frantic. He rushed up
on Sunday afternoon, and