He plunged his head into a basin of cold water, threw open his window and leaned out into the pure regenerating night.  Spinks sat down on a chair and watched him, his fresh, handsome face clouded with anxiety.  He adored Rickman sober; but for Rickman drunk he had a curious yearning affection.  If anything, he preferred him in that state.  It seemed to bring him nearer to him.  Spinks had never been drunk in his life, but that was his feeling.

Rickman laid his arms upon the window sill and his head upon his arms.

“‘The blessed damozel leaned out,’” he said (the idea in his mind being that he was a blessed damozel).

“‘From the gold bar of heaven.’”

("Never knew they had ’em up there,” murmured Spinks.)

“’Her eyes were deeper than the depth of waters stilled at even’—­Oh—­my—­God!”

A great sigh shook him, and went shuddering into the night like the passing of a lost soul.  He got up and staggered to the table, and grasped it by the edge, nearly upsetting the lamp.  The flare in his brain had died down as the lamp burnt steadily.  Under its shade a round of light fell on his Euripides, open at the page he had been reading the night before.

[Greek:  ELENE]

He saw it very black, with the edges a little wavering, a little blurred, as if it had been burnt by fire into the whiteness of the page.  Below, the smaller type of a chorus reeled and shook through all its lines.  Set up by an intoxicated compositor.

Under the Euripides was the piled up manuscript of Rickman’s great neo-classic drama, Helen in Leuce.  He implored Spinks to read it.  (Spinks was a draper’s assistant and uncultured.) He thrust the manuscript into his hands.

“There,” he said, “rea’ that.  Tha’s the sor’ o’ thing I write when I’m drunk.  Couldn’ do it now t’ save my life.  Temp’rance been my ruin.”

He threw himself on his bed.

“It’s all righ’.  At nine o’clock to-morrow morning, no—­at a quar’er pas’ nine, I mean three quar’ers pas’ nine, I shall be drunk.  Not disgustingly and ridicklelously, as you are, Spinky, at this minute, but soo-p-p-perbubbly, loominously, divinely drunk!  You don’ know what I could do if I was only drunk.”

“Oh, come, I shouldn’t complain, if I was you.  You’ll do pretty well as you are, I think.”

With an almost maternal tenderness and tact Mr. Spinks contrived to separate the poet from his poem.  He then undressed him.  That is to say, by alternate feats of strength, dexterity and cunning, he succeeded in disengaging him from the looser portion of his clothing.  From his shirt and trousers Rickman refused to part, refused with a shake of the head, slow, gentle, and implacable, and with a smile of great sweetness and gravity and wisdom.  He seemed to regard those garments with a peculiar emotion as the symbols of his dignity, and more especially, as the insignia of sobriety.