Generally four bachelor beds were made up, and a screened end of
the room stacked with the material for twice as many more. At Christmas
all were in use, and lined the two long walls--which Dalzell called
"herding", and disliked extremely, while recognising that it was a
necessary arrangement to which it was his duty to conform.

The herd was undressing itself in a miscellaneous manner--yawning,
chaffing, cutting stupid jokes, some of them at his expense; until the
process was at an end, and he could reasonably assume the fellows to be
asleep, he preferred the gardens to the bachelors' quarters.

And the free night enfolded him--the rising moon uplifted him--in the
usual way, he being, like Deb, like Guthrie Carey, an instrument fitted
to respond to their mute appeals. Perhaps even more finely fitted than
Guthrie or Deb; for he had what are called "gifts" of intellect and
imagination transcending theirs--faculties of mind which, lacking
worthy use, bred in him a sort of chronic melancholy, the poetic
discontent of the unappreciated and misunderstood--a mood to which
moonlight ministers as wine to the drinking fever, at once an exquisite
exasperation and a divine appeasement. He was a poet, a painter, a
musician--possibly a soldier, or a king--possibly anything--spoiled,
blighted by that misnamed good fortune which the lucky workers who had
to work so naturally and stupidly envied him. The proper stimulus to
the worthy development of the manhood latent in him had been taken from
him at the start. And now he wandered amongst his dilettantisms,
dissatisfied and ineffectual. He lived beneath himself in his common
intercourse with others; he ate his heart when he was alone.

Unconsciously, by force of habit, he selected the most