Yet something might be said for the comparison. Clarke undoubtedly was
universally broad, and undoubtedly concealed, with no less exquisite
taste than the Elizabethan, his own personality under the splendid
raiment of his art. They certainly were affinities. It would not have
been surprising to him to see the clear calm head of Shakespeare rise
from behind his host.

Perhaps--who knows?--the very presence of the bust in his room had, to
some extent, subtly and secretly moulded Reginald Clarke's life. A man's
soul, like the chameleon, takes colour from its environment. Even
comparative trifles, the number of the house in which we live, or the
colour of the wallpaper of a room, may determine a destiny.

The boy's eyes were again surveying the fantastic surroundings in which
he found himself; while, from a corner, Clarke's eyes were watching his
every movement, as if to follow his thoughts into the innermost
labyrinth of the mind. It seemed to Ernest, under the spell of this
passing fancy, as though each vase, each picture, each curio in the
room, was reflected in Clarke's work. In a long-queued, porcelain
Chinese mandarin he distinctly recognised a quaint quatrain in one of
Clarke's most marvellous poems. And he could have sworn that the grin of
the Hindu monkey-god on the writing-table reappeared in the weird rhythm
of two stanzas whose grotesque cadence had haunted him for years.

At last Clarke broke the silence. "You like my studio?" he asked.

The simple question brought Ernest back to reality.

"Like it? Why, it's stunning. It set up in me the queerest train of