There was a bright clear space in his brain which Pilkington’s champagne had not penetrated, so intolerably clear and bright that it hurt him to look at it.  In that space three figures reeled and whirled; three, yet one and the same; Poppy of the coster-dance, Poppy of the lunatic ballet, and Poppy of the Arabian night.  Beyond the bright space and the figures there was a dark place that was somehow curtained off.  Something had happened there, he could not see what.  And in trying to see he forgot to turn the gas out.  He turned it up instead.

He left it blazing away at the rate of a penny an hour, a witness against him in the face of morning.  But he did not forget to sit down at the bottom of the stairs and take his boots off, lest he should wake Flossie Walker, the little clerk, who worked so hard, and had to be up so early.  He left them on the stairs, where Flossie tripped over them in the morning.

On the first landing a young man in a frowsy sleeping suit stood waiting for him.  A fresh, sober, and thoroughly wide-awake young man.

“Gurra bed, Spinks,” said Mr. Rickman severely to the young man.

“All right, old man.”  Mr. Spinks lowered his voice to a discreet whisper.  “I say—­do you want me to help you find your legs?”

“Wish you’d fin’ any par’ of me that is n’ legs,” said Mr. Rickman.  And he went on to explain and to demonstrate to Mr. Spinks the resemblance (amounting to identity) between himself and the Manx arms.  “Three legs, rampant, on the bend, proper.  Amazin’, isn’t it?”

“It is amazin’.”

Feigning surprise and interest, Mr. Spinks relieved him of his candle; and under that escort Mr. Rickman managed to attain to the second floor.

Mr. Rickman’s room was bared to the glimmer of a lamp in the street below.  He plunged and stumbled through a litter of books.  The glimmer fell on the books, on many books; books that covered three walls from floor to ceiling; books ranged above and beside the little camp-bed in the corner; books piled on the table and under it.  The glimmer fell, too, on the mantel-piece, reflected from the glass above it, right on to the white statuette of the Venus of Milo that supported a photograph of a dancing Poppy—­Poppy, who laughed in the face of the goddess with insatiable impudence, and flung to the immortal forehead the flick of her shameless foot.  White and austere gleamed the Venus (if Venus she be, for some say she is a Wingless Victory, and Rickman, when sober, inclined to that opinion).  White and austere gleamed the little camp-bed in the corner.  He ignored Mr. Spinks’ discreet suggestion.  He wasn’t going to undress to please Spinks or anybody.  He’d see Spinks in another world first.  He wasn’t going to bed like a potman; he was going to sit up like a poet and write.  That’s what he was going to do.  This was his study.

With shaking hands he lit the lamp on his study table; the wick sputtered, and the light in his head jigged horribly with the jigging of the flame.  It was as if he was being stabbed with little knives of light.