And Rankin’s chef continued to send forth his swift and fair creations.

Rickman felt his forehead grow cold and damp.  He leaned back and wiped it with his handkerchief.  A glance passed between Maddox and Rankin.  But old Mrs. Rankin looked at him and the motherhood stirred in her heart.

“Won’t you change places with me?  I expect you’re feeling that fire too much at your back.”

Maddox plucked his sleeve.  “Better stay where you are,” he whispered.

Rickman rose instantly to his feet.  The horrible conviction was growing on him that he was going to faint, to faint or to be ignominiously ill.  That came sometimes of starving, by some irony of Nature.

“Don’t Maddy—­I think perhaps—­”

Surely he was going to faint.

Maddox jumped up and held him as he staggered from the room.

Rankin looked at his wife and his wife looked at Rankin.  “He may be a very great poet,” said she, “but I hope you’ll never ask him to dine here again.”

“Never.  I can promise you,” said Rankin.

The mother had a kinder voice.  “I think the poor fellow was feeling ill from that fire.”

“Well he might, too,” said Rankin with all the bitterness that became the husband of elegant respectability.

“Go and make him lie down and be sure and keep his head lower than his feet,” said Rankin’s mother.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if Ricky’s head were considerably lower than his feet already,” said Rankin.  And when he said it the bosses of his face grew genial again as the old coarse junior journalistic humour possessed itself of the situation.  And he went out sniggering and cursing by turns under his moustache.

Rankin’s mother was right.  Rickman was feeling very ill indeed.  Without knowing how he got there he found himself lying on a bed in Rankin’s dressing-room.  Maddox and Rankin were with him.  Maddox had taken off his boots and loosened his collar for him, and was now standing over him contemplating the effect.

“That’s all very well,” said Maddox, “but how the dickens am I to get him home?  Especially as we don’t know his address.”

“Ask him.”

“I’m afraid our Ricky-ticky’s hardly in a state to give very reliable information.”

“Sixty-five Howland Street,” said Rickman faintly, and the two smiled.

“It was Torrington Square, but I forget the number.”

“Sixty-five Howland Street,” repeated Rickman with an effort to be distinct.

Maddox shook his head.  Rickman had sunk low enough, but it was incredible to them that he should have sunk as low as Howland Street.  His insistence on that address they regarded as a pleasantry peculiar to his state.  “It’s perfectly hopeless,” said Maddox.  “I don’t see anything for it, Rankin, but to let him stay where he is.”

At that Rickman roused himself from his stupor.  “If you’d only stop jawing and give me some brandy, I could go.”