without the aid of the beckoning Helen may enter there. But a side
entrance is the destiny of most aspirants, even those with the golden key
of genius, and they are a long time in working their way to be seen
coming out, of the front entrance. It is true that a man can attract
considerable and immediate attention by trying to effect an entrance
through the sewer, but he seldom gains the respect of the public whom he
interests, any more than an exhibitor of fireworks gains the reputation
of an artist that is accorded to the painter of a good picture.

Philip was waiting at the front door, with his essays and his prose
symphonies and his satirical novel--the satire of a young man is apt to
be very bitter--but it was as tightly shut against him as if a publisher
and not the muse of literature kept the door.

There was a fellow-boarder with Philip, whose acquaintance he had made at
the common table in the basement, who appeared to be free of the world of
letters and art. He was an alert, compact, neatly dressed little fellow,
who had apparently improved every one of his twenty-eight years in the
study of life, in gaining assurance and confidence in himself, and also
presented himself as one who knew the nether world completely but was not
of it. He would have said of himself that he knew it profoundly, that he
frequented it for "material," but that his home was in another sphere.
The impression was that he belonged among those brilliant guerrillas of
both sexes, in the border-land of art and society, who lived daintily and
talked about life with unconventional freedom. Slight in figure, with
very black hair, and eyes of cloudy gray, an olive complexion, and
features trained to an immobility proof against emotion or surprise, the
whole poised as we would say in the act of being gentlemanly, it is
needless to say that he took himself seriously. His readiness,
self-confidence, cocksureness, Philip thought all expressed in his name