blast of this simulated simoom. It would be trodden under foot by the
log-roller's elephantine jocosity. In a sort of despair he turned to
Maurice Mangan, and would have entered into conversation with him but
that Mangan now rose and said he must be going, nor could he be
prevailed on to stay. Lionel accompanied him into the hall.

"That Jabberwock makes me sick; he's such an ugly devil," Mangan said,
as he put on his hat; and surely that was strange language coming from
a grave philosopher who was about to publish a volume on the
"Fundamental Fallacies of M. Comte."

"But what am I to do, Maurice?" Lionel said, as his friend was leaving.
"It's no use asking for his intervention at present; he's simply running
amuck."

"If your friend--Lady What's-her-name--is as clever as you say, she'll
just twist that fellow round her finger," the other observed, briefly.
"Good-night, Linn."

And indeed it was not of Octavius Little, nor yet of Lady Adela's novel,
that Maurice Mangan was thinking as he carelessly walked away through
the dark London thoroughfares, towards his rooms in Victoria Street. He
was thinking of that quiet little Surrey village; and of two boys there
who had a great belief in each other--and in themselves, too, for the
matter of that; and of all the beautiful and wonderful dreams they
dreamed while as yet the far-reaching future was veiled from them. And
then he thought of Linn Moore's dressing-room at the theatre; and of the
paints and powder and vulgar tinsel that had to fit him out for
exhibition before the footlights; and of the feverish whirl of life and
the bedazzlement of popularity and fashionable petting; and somehow or