II.

Austin Selwyn was twenty-six--an age which has something in common with
almost every one of the seven celebrated by Shakespeare. Like most men
in their twenties, he had the character of a chameleon, and adapted
himself to his surroundings with almost uncanny facility. At college
he had been an ardent member of a dozen cliques, even falling under the
egotism of the men who dabbled in Spiritualism, but a clarity of
thought and a strain of Dutch ancestry kept his feet on the earth when
the rest of him showed signs of soaring.

Some moderate wit had said of him at college that he was himself only
twice a day--when he got up in the morning and when he went to bed at
night. This Stevensonian theory was not quite true, for a chameleon
does not cease to be a chameleon because it changes its colour.

It was perhaps his susceptibility to the many vintages of existence
that had impelled him to write, authors being more or less a natural
result of the economic law of intake and output. As is the habit of
most young writers, he wrote on various subjects, put enough material
for a two-volume novel into a short story, and generally revelled in
the prodigality of literary youth. He was prepared to be a social
satirist, a chronicler of the Smart Set, a champion of the down-trodden
masses, or a commercial essayist, according to the first public that
showed appreciation of his work.

Although he had lived in Boston, that city which claims so close an
affinity to ancient Athens (as a matter of fact, has it not been said
that Athens is the Boston of Europe?), he was drawn to the great vortex