Now, if Rickman had not been connected with The Museion, the review would have done him neither harm nor good.  As it was, it did him harm.  It was naturally supposed that Jewdwine, so far from understating his admiration, had suppressed his bad opinion in the interests of friendship.  Rickman’s Saturnalia remained where Hanson had placed it, rather low in the ranks of young Decadence.

And then, just because he had suppressed the truth about him, because he felt that he had given Rickman some grounds for bitterness, Jewdwine began to feel more and more bitter himself.

If Rickman felt any bitterness he never showed it.  He had only two thoughts on reading Jewdwine’s articles.  “It wouldn’t have mattered except that she will see it”; and “I wouldn’t have minded if it was what he really thought.”

Maddox, rightly judging that Rickman would be suffering more in his affection than his vanity, called on him that afternoon and dragged him out for his usual Saturday walk.  As if the thought of Jewdwine dominated their movements, they found themselves on the way to Hampstead.  Maddox attempted consolation.

“It really doesn’t matter much what Jewdwine says.  These fellows come up from Oxford with wet towels round their heads to keep the metaphysics in.  Jewdwine’s muddled himself with the Absolute Beauty till he doesn’t know a beautiful thing if you stick it under his nose.”

“Possibly not; if you keep it farther off he might have a better chance.  Trust him to know.”

“Well, if he knows, he doesn’t care.”

“Oh, doesn’t he.  That’s where Jewdwine’s great.  He cares for nothing else.  He cares more than any man alive—­in his heart.”

“D—­n his heart!  I don’t believe he has one.”

“Would you oblige me by not talking about him any more?”

Maddox obliged him.

They tramped far into the country, returning at nightfall by the great road that crosses the high ground of the Heath.  Rickman loved that road; for by night, or on a misty evening, it was possible to imagine some remote resemblance between it and the long straight ridge of Harcombe Hill.

They paused by common consent where the Heath drops suddenly from the edge of the road; opening out the view towards London.  The hollow beneath them, filled by a thin fog, had become mysterious and immense.

“By the way,” said Maddox, following an apparently irrelevant train of thought, “what has become of your friendship for Miss Poppy Grace?”

“It has gone,” said Rickman, “where the old trousers go.  Look there—­”

Above them heaven seemed to hang low, bringing its stars nearer.  A few clouds drifted across it, drenched in the blue of the night behind them, a grey-blue, watery and opaque.  Below, sunk in a night greyer and deeper, were the lights of London.  The ridge they stood on was like the rampart of another world hung between the stars which are the lights of poets, and the lights which are the stars of men.  Under the stars Maddox chanted softly the last verses of the Song of Confession that Rickman had made.