"I am so happy you came," Reginald Clarke said, as he conducted Ernest
into his studio. It was a large, luxuriously furnished room overlooking
the Hudson and Riverside Drive.

Dazzled and bewildered, the boy's eyes wandered from object to object,
from picture to statue. Despite seemingly incongruous details, the whole
arrangement possessed style and distinction.

A satyr on the mantelpiece whispered obscene secrets into the ears of
Saint Cecilia. The argent limbs of Antinous brushed against the garments
of Mona Lisa. And from a corner a little rococo lady peered coquettishly
at the gray image of an Egyptian sphinx. There was a picture of Napoleon
facing the image of the Crucified. Above all, in the semi-darkness,
artificially produced by heavy draperies, towered two busts.

"Shakespeare and Balzac!" Ernest exclaimed with some surprise.

"Yes," explained Reginald, "they are my gods."

His gods! Surely there was a key to Clarke's character. Our gods are
ourselves raised to the highest power.

Clarke and Shakespeare!

Even to Ernest's admiring mind it seemed almost blasphemous to name a
contemporary, however esteemed, in one breath with the mighty master of
song, whose great gaunt shadow, thrown against the background of the
years has assumed immense, unproportionate, monstrous dimensions.