He rose at once, and dressed quickly, doing his best to shake off the clinging misery of sleep.  In a little while it had passed, and he tried to go over in his mind the events of the preceding day.  Were they, too, only fragments of a long dream?  Surely so many and strange events could not have crowded themselves into one period of twelve hours; and for him, whose days passed with such dreary monotony.  The interview with Maud Enderby seemed so unnaturally long ago; that with Ida Starr, so impossibly fresh and recent.  Yet both had undoubtedly taken place.  He, who but yesterday morning had felt so bitterly his loneliness in the world, and, above all, the impossibility of what he most longed for—­woman’s companionship—­ found himself all at once on terms of at least friendly intimacy with two women, both young, both beautiful, yet so wholly different.  Each answered to an ideal which he cherished, and the two ideals were so diverse, so mutually exclusive.  The experience had left him in a curious frame of mind.  For the present, he felt cool, almost indifferent, to both his new acquaintances.  He had asked and obtained leave to write to Maud Enderby; what on earth could he write about?  How could he address her?  He had promised to go and see Ida Starr, on a most impracticable footing.  Was it not almost certain that, before the day came round, her caprice would have vanished, and his reception would prove anything but a flattering one?  The feelings which both girls had at the time excited in him seemed artificial; in his present mood he in vain tried to resuscitate his interest either in the one or the other.  It was as though he had over-exerted his emotional powers, and they lay exhausted.  Weariness was the only reality of which he was conscious.  He must turn his mind to other things.  Having breakfasted, he remembered what day it was, and presently took down a volume of his Goethe, opening at the Easter morning scene in Faust, favourite reading with him.  This inspired him with a desire to go into the open air; it was a bright day, and there would be life in the streets.  Just as he began to prepare himself for walking, there came a knock at his door, and Julian Casti entered.

“Halloa!” Waymark cried.  “I thought you told me you were engaged with your cousin to-day.”

“I was, but I sent her a note yesterday to say I was unable to meet her.”

“Then why didn’t you write at the same time and tell me you were coming?  I might have gone out for the day.”

“I had no intention of coming then.”

“What’s the matter?  You look out of sorts.”

“I don’t feel in very good spirits.  By the by, I heard from the publishers yesterday.  Here’s the note.”

It simply stated that Messrs. So-and-so had given their best attention to the play of “Stilicho,” which Mr. Casti had been so good as to submit to them, and regretted their inability to make any proposal for its publication, seeing that its subject was hardly likely to excite popular interest.  They thanked the author for offering it to them, and begged to return the MS.