upon it on a night at Stockholm--continually gained strength in him.
Youth must beget visions and man must preserve them if great work were
to be done; and so easily the visions lost their splendour and their
inspiration. Of all the ways of tarnishing the vision, perhaps talk was
the most murderous. Hillyard possessed them. Hillyard was ashamed that
he had spoken of them. Therefore he had some chance of retaining them.

"Yes, I will show you the celebrities." He pointed out the leading
critics and the blue stockings of the day. His eyes roamed over the
stalls. "Do you see the man with the broad face and the short whiskers
in the fourth row? The man who looks just a little too like a country
gentleman to be one? That is Sir Chichester Splay. He made a fortune in
a murky town of Lancashire, and, thirsting for colour, came up to London
determined to back a musical comedy. That is the way the craving for
colour takes them in the North. His wish was gratified. He backed 'The
Patchouli Girl,' and in that shining garden he got stung. He is now what
they call an amateur. No first night is complete without him. He is the
half-guinea Mecænas of our days."

Hillyard looked down at Sir Chichester Splay and smiled at his
companion's description.

"You will meet him to-night at supper, and if your play is a
success--not otherwise--you will stay with him in Sussex."

"No!" cried Hillyard; but Sir Charles was relentless in his insistence.

"You will. His wife will see to that. Who the pretty girl beside him is
I do not know. But the more or less young man on the other side of her,
talking to her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public