even dissipated."

Rickman looked hard at Jewdwine's boots. Irreproachable boots, well
made, well polished, unspotted by the world. And the only
distinguishable word in Rickman's answer was "Life." And as he said
"Life" he blushed like a girl when for the first time she says "Love,"
a blush of rapture and of shame, her young blood sensitive to the
least hint of apathy in her audience.

Jewdwine's apathy was immense.

"Another name for the fugitive actuality," he said. "Well, I'm afraid
I haven't any more time--" He looked round the room a little vaguely,
and as he did so he laid on the young man's shoulder a delicate
fastidious hand. "There are one or two men here I should have liked to
introduce you to, if I'd had time.--Another night, perhaps--" He
piloted him downstairs and so out into the Strand.

"Good night. Good night. Take my advice and leave the fugitive
actuality alone."

Those were Jewdwine's last words, spoken from the depths of the
hansom. It carried him to the classic heights of Hampstead, to the
haunts of the cultivated, the intellectual, the refined.

Rickman remained a moment. His dreamy gaze was fixed on the massive
pile before him, that rose, solidly soaring, flaunting a brutal
challenge to the tender April sky. It stood for the vast material
reality, the whole of that eternal, implacable Power which is at
enmity with dreams; which may be conquered, propitiated, absorbed, but