worked late at night.

"You must be frightfully busy?" Ernest asked, with genuine concern.

"So I am," Reginald replied. "I always work in a white heat. I am
restless, nervous, feverish, and can find no peace until I have given
utterance to all that clamours after birth."

"What is it that is so engaging your mind, the epic of the French
Revolution?"

"Oh, no. I should never have undertaken that. I haven't done a stroke of
work on it for several weeks. In fact, ever since Walkham called, I
simply couldn't. It seemed as if a rough hand had in some way destroyed
the web of my thought. Poetry in the writing is like red hot glass
before the master-blower has fashioned it into birds and trees and
strange fantastic shapes. A draught, caused by the opening of a door may
distort it. But at present I am engaged upon more important work. I am
modelling a vessel not of fine-spun glass, but of molten gold."

"You make me exceedingly anxious to know what you have in store for us.
It seems to me you have reached a point where even you can no longer
surpass yourself."

Reginald smiled. "Your praise is too generous, yet it warms like
sunshine. I will confess that my conception is unique. It combines with
the ripeness of my technique the freshness of a second spring."

Ernest was bubbling with anticipated delights. His soul responded to
Reginald's touch as a harp to the winds. "When," he cried, "shall we be