"It's all so unimportant," said Lucian, and he really thought so. He had
sweeter things to dream of, and desired no communion of feeling with that
madman who had left Caermaen some few hours before. He felt he had made a
fool of himself, he was ashamed to think of the fatuity of which he had
been guilty, such boiling hatred was not only wicked, but absurd. A man
could do no good who put himself into a position of such violent
antagonism against his fellow-creatures; so Lucian rebuked his heart,
saying that he was old enough to know better. But he remembered that he
had sweeter things to dream of; there was a secret ecstasy that he
treasured and locked tight away, as a joy too exquisite even for thought
till he was quite alone; and then there was that scheme for a new book
that he had laid down hopelessly some time ago; it seemed to have arisen
into life again within the last hour; he understood that he had started
on a false tack, he had taken the wrong aspect of his idea. Of course the
thing couldn't be written in that way; it was like trying to read a page
turned upside down; and he saw those characters he had vainly sought
suddenly disambushed, and a splendid inevitable sequence of events
unrolled before him.

It was a true resurrection; the dry plot he had constructed revealed
itself as a living thing, stirring and mysterious, and warm as life
itself. The parson was smoking stolidly to all appearance, but in reality
he was full of amazement at his own son, and now and again he slipped sly
furtive glances towards the tranquil young man in the arm-chair by the
empty hearth. In the first place, Mr. Taylor was genuinely impressed by
what he had read of Lucian's work; he had so long been accustomed to look
upon all effort as futile that success amazed him. In the abstract, of
course, he was prepared to admit that some people did write well and got
published and made money, just as other persons successfully backed an