follow Tilliard, and suppose the cow not to be there unless
oneself was there to see her. A cowless world, then, stretched
round him on every side. Yet he had only to peep into a field,
and, click! it would at once become radiant with bovine life.

Suddenly he realized that this, again, would never do. As
usual, he had missed the whole point, and was overlaying
philosophy with gross and senseless details. For if the cow
was not there, the world and the fields were not there either.
And what would Ansell care about sunlit flanks or impassable
streams? Rickie rebuked his own groveling soul, and turned his
eyes away from the night, which had led him to such absurd
conclusions.

The fire was dancing, and the shadow of Ansell, who stood close
up to it, seemed to dominate the little room. He was still
talking, or rather jerking, and he was still lighting matches and
dropping their ends upon the carpet. Now and then he would make a
motion with his feet as if he were running quickly backward
upstairs, and would tread on the edge of the fender, so that the
fire-irons went flying and the buttered-bun dishes crashed
against each other in the hearth. The other philosophers were
crouched in odd shapes on the sofa and table and chairs, and one,
who was a little bored, had crawled to the piano and was timidly
trying the Prelude to Rhinegold with his knee upon the soft
pedal. The air was heavy with good tobacco-smoke and the pleasant
warmth of tea, and as Rickie became more sleepy the events of the
day seemed to float one by one before his acquiescent eyes. In
the morning he had read Theocritus, whom he believed to be the
greatest of Greek poets; he had lunched with a merry don and had