“Worked up!” Villiers was completely taken back by the oddity of this question.

“Come!” continued Alwyn persuasively, his fine eyes sparkling with mischievous good-humor..  “You can’t make me believe that ’All England’ took to me suddenly of its own accord,—­it is not so romantic, so poetry-loving, so independent, or so generous as that!  How was my ‘celebrity’ first started?  If my book,—­which has all the disadvantage of being a poem instead of a novel,—­has so suddenly leaped into high favor and renown, why, then, some leading critic or other must have thought that I myself was dead!”

The whimsical merriment of his face seemed to reflect itself on that of Villiers.

“You’re too quick-witted, Alwyn, positively you are!” he remonstrated with a frankly humorous smile..  “But as it happens, you’re perfectly right!  Not one critic, but three,—­three of our most influential men, too—­thought you were dead!—­and that ‘Nourhalma’ was a posthumous work of perished genius!”

CHAPTER XXXII.

ZABASTESISM and PAULISM.

The delighted air of triumphant conviction with which Alwyn received this candid statement was irresistible, and Villiers’s attempt at equanimity entirely gave way before it.  He broke into a roar of laughter,—­laughter in which his friend joined,—­and for a minute or two the room rang with the echoes of their mutual mirth.

“It wasn’t my doing,” said Villiers at last, when he could control himself a little,—­“and even now I don’t in the least know how the misconception arose!  ‘Nourhalma’ was published, according to your instructions, as rapidly as it could be got through the press, and I had no preliminary ‘puffs’ or announcements of any kind circulated in the papers.  I merely advertised it with a notable simplicity, thus:  ’Nourhalma.  A Love-Legend of the Past.  A Poem.  By Theos Alwyn.’  That was all.  Well, when it came out, copies of it were sent, according to custom, round to all the leading newspaper offices, and for about three weeks after its publication I saw not a word concerning it anywhere.  Meanwhile I went on advertising.  One day at the Constitutional Club, while glancing over the Parthenon, I suddenly spied in it a long review, occupying four columns, and headed ‘A Wonder-Poem’; and just out of curiosity, I began to read it.  I remember—­in fact I shall never forget,—­its opening sentence, . . it was so original!” and he laughed again.  “It commenced thus:  ’It has been truly said that those whom the gods love die young!’ and then on it went, dragging in memories of Chatterton and Shelley and Keats, till I found myself yawning and wondering what the deuce the writer was driving at.  Presently, about the end of the second column, I came to the assertion that ’the posthumous poem of “Nourhalma” must be admitted as one of the most glorious productions