Ernest surveyed this gorgeous assembly with the absent look of a sleep-walker.  Not that his sensuous soul was unsusceptible to the atmosphere of culture and corruption that permeated the whole, nor to the dazzling colour effects that tantalised while they delighted the eye.  But to-night they shrivelled into insignificance before the splendour of his inner vision.  A radiant dreamland palace, his play, had risen from the night of inchoate thought.  It was wonderful, it was real, and needed for its completion only the detail of actual construction.  And now the characters were hovering in the recesses of his brain, were yearning to leave that many-winded labyrinth to become real beings of paper and ink.  He would probably have tarried overlong in this fanciful mansion, had not the reappearance of an unexpected guest broken his reverie.

“Jack!” he exclaimed in surprise, “I thought you a hundred miles away from here.”

“That shows that you no longer care for me,” Jack playfully answered.  “When our friendship was young, you always had a presentiment of my presence.”

“Ah, perhaps I had.  But tell me, where do you hail from?”

“Clarke called me up on the telephone—­long-distance, you know.  I suppose it was meant as a surprise for you.  And you certainly looked surprised—­not even pleasantly.  I am really head-over-heels at work.  But you know how it is.  Sometimes a little imp whispers into my ears daring me to do a thing which I know is foolish.  But what of it?  My legs are strong enough not to permit my follies to overtake me.”

“It was certainly good of you to come.  In fact, you make me very glad.  I feel that I need you to-night—­I don’t know why.  The feeling came suddenly—­suddenly as you.  I only know I need you.  How long can you stay?”

“I must leave you to-morrow morning.  I have to hustle somewhat.  You know my examinations are taking place in a day or two and I’ve got to cram up a lot of things.”

“Still,” remarked Ernest, “your visit will repay you for the loss of time.  Clarke will read to us to-night his masterpiece.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.  I only know it’s the real thing.  It’s worth all the wisdom bald-headed professors may administer to you in concentrated doses at five thousand a year.”

“Come now,” Jack could not help saying, “is your memory giving way?  Don’t you remember your own days in college—­especially the mathematical examinations?  You know that your marks came always pretty near the absolute zero.”

“Jack,” cried Ernest in honest indignation, “not the last time.  The last time I didn’t flunk.”

“No, because your sonnet on Cartesian geometry roused even the math-fiend to compassion.  And don’t you remember Professor Squeeler, whose heart seemed to leap with delight whenever he could tell you that, in spite of incessant toil on your part, he had again flunked you in physics with fifty-nine and a half per cent.?”