watch set with jewels, "I am afraid I must bid you good-bye."

He held Ernest's hand for a moment in a firm genial grasp, then turned
away briskly, while the boy remained standing open-mouthed. The crowd
jostling against him carried him almost off his feet, but his eyes
followed far into the night the masterful figure of Reginald Clarke,
toward whom he felt himself drawn with every fiber of his body and the
warm enthusiasm of his generous youth.




II


With elastic step, inhaling the night-air with voluptuous delight,
Reginald Clarke made his way down Broadway, lying stretched out before
him, bathed in light and pulsating with life.

His world-embracing intellect was powerfully attracted by the Giant
City's motley activities. On the street, as in the salon, his magnetic
power compelled recognition, and he stepped through the midst of the
crowd as a Circassian blade cleaves water.

After walking a block or two, he suddenly halted before a jeweller's
shop. Arrayed in the window were priceless gems that shone in the glare
of electricity, like mystical serpent-eyes--green, pomegranate and
water-blue. And as he stood there the dazzling radiance before him was
transformed in the prism of his mind into something great and very
wonderful that might, some day, be a poem.