alarm to her incoherent murmurings of “Mike darling, oh, Mike!” John had uttered no word of protest until dear old Laura, who had never, as Mike said, behaved badly to anybody, and had been loved by everybody, sat down at their table, and the discussion turned on who was likely to be Bessie’s first sweetheart, Bessie being her youngest sister whom she was “bringing out.”  Then he rose from the table and wished Mike good-night; but Mike’s liking for John was sincere, and preferring his company to Laura’s, he paid the bill and followed his friend out of the restaurant; and as they walked home together he listened to his grave and dignified admonitions, and though John could not touch Mike’s conscience, he always moved his sympathies.  It is the shallow and the insincere that inspire ridicule and contempt, and even in the dissipations of the Temple, where he had come to live, he had not failed to enforce respect for his convictions and ideals.

In the Temple John had made many acquaintances and friends, and about him were found the contributors to the Pilgrim, a weekly newspaper devoted to young men, their doings, their amusements, their literature, and their art.  The editor and proprietor of this organ of amusement was Escott.  His editorial work was principally done in his chambers in Temple Gardens, where he lived with his friend, Mike Fletcher.  Of necessity the newspaper drew, like gravitation, art and literature, but the revelling lords who assembled there were a disintegrating influence, and made John Norton a sort of second centre; and Harding and Thompson and others of various temperaments and talents found their way to Pump Court.  Like cuckoos, some men are only really at home in the homes of others; others are always ill at ease when taken out of the surroundings which they have composed to their ideas and requirements; and John Norton was never really John Norton except when, wrapped in his long dressing-gown and sitting in his high canonical chair, he listened to Harding’s paradoxes or Thompson’s sententious utterances.  These artistic discussions—­when in the passion of the moment, all the cares of life were lost and the soul battled in pure idea—­were full of attraction and charm for John, and he often thought he had never been so happy.  And then Harding’s eyes would brighten, and his intelligence, eager as a wolf prowling for food, ran to and fro, seeking and sniffing in all John’s interests and enthusiasms.  He was at once fascinated by the scheme for the pessimistic poem and charmed with the projected voyage in Thibet and the book on the Great Lamas.

One evening a discussion arose as to whether Goethe had stolen from Schopenhauer, or Schopenhauer from Goethe, the comparison of man’s life with the sun “which seems to set to our earthly eyes, but which in reality never sets, but shines on unceasingly.”  The conversation came to a pause, and then Harding said—­

“Mike spoke to me of a pessimistic poem he has in mind; did he ever speak to you about it, Escott?”