to bring forth. Exposed on his little daïs 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