ore clearly into himself and
her and the life that would so soon make them one. If it was not the
best life, he told himself that of its kind it would be very good. He
had no doubt now that Flossie loved him. He was led to this certainty
by the maternal quality in her present dealings with him, when perhaps
it should have warned him rather that these cares were not for him.

Flossie had somewhat elaborated her dream. Bearing the fascinating
name of Muriel Maud, it had grown softer and rosier than ever. She
could not any longer deny its mysterious association with Keith
Rickman, though she would have died rather than that Keith should have
suspected it. And now as she sat mending Keith's socks her fancy all
the time was busy fashioning delicious garments for her dream. Flossie
never pursued her vision of Muriel Maud beyond the period of
enchanting infancy; when it outgrew the tender folly of those
garments, it was dismissed from Flossie's fancy with unmaternal
harshness. Therefore it appeared eternally innocent and young, mortal
in a delicate immortality. In fact, viewing her life too in the light
of the bedroom firelight, Flossie was herself deceived.

They were both blissfully unaware that Nature cares nothing about
love, but was bent upon using them for the only end she does care
about, the end that gives to love the illusion of its own eternity.

But Maddox saw through it in a minute. It was in the earlier stages of
the poet's illness, and Maddox had happened to put his head into
Rickman's room at the moment when Flossie, compelled by Mrs. Downey,
was helping to put a stinging mustard plaster on his chest. They
shrieked, and Maddox instantly withdrew.

He painted the scene afterwards for Rankin in the lurid and symbolic
colours of his Celtic fancy. "Talk of Samson among the Philistines,
it's nothing to Ricky-ticky in that d----d boarding-house. There was a
woman on each side of his bed. They'd got him down on it; they were
pinning the poor little chap in his blankets. I could just see
Ricky-ticky's face between their shoulders; it was very red; and I
shall never forget the expression on it, never. The agony, Rankin, the
hopeless, unutterable agony."

"What were they doing to him?"

"I couldn't see properly. But I think they were cutting his hair off."

He declared later that he had distinctly heard the squeaking of that
young Delilah's scissors. "We're not told whether Delilah was Samson's
wife," said he. "Bu