ords of destiny like blood-hued rubies; words fraught with ominous
opal warning; words that glittered with the biting brilliance of
diamonds--they were his to link together with thought: he was their
master. The necromancy of language was his to conjure with.

Day after day, and into the long hours of the night, he wrote,
destroying pages as he read them, refining, changing, rewriting, always
striving for results which would show no signs of construction, but
only breathe with life. When fatigue sounded its warnings he
disregarded them, and spurred himself on with the thought of the
thousands dying daily at the front. He saw no one. His former London
acquaintances were engrossed in affairs of war, and made no attempt to
seek him out. It was his custom to have breakfast and luncheon in his
rooms; at dinner-time he would traverse the streets until he found some
little-used restaurant, and then, selecting a deserted corner, would
eat his meal alone. The walk there and back to his rooms was the only
exercise he permitted himself, except occasionally, when, late at
night, cramped fingers and bloodshot eyes would no longer obey the
lashing of the will, and he would venture out for an hour's stroll
through night-shrouded London.

Prowling about from square to square, through deserted alleys, and by
slumbering parks, he would feel the cumulative destinies of the
millions of sleeping souls bearing on his consciousness. Solitude in a
metropolis, unlike that of the country, which merely lulls or tends to
the purifying of thought, intensifies the moods of a man like strong
liquor. He who lives alone among millions courts all the mad fancies
that his brain is heir to. Insanity, perversion, incoherent idealism,
fanaticism--these are the offspring of unnatural detachment from one's
fellows, and in turn give birth to the black moods of revolt against
each and every thing that is.

Living as he did in a sort of ecstasy by reason of his suddenly
realised world-citizenship, Selwyn's incipient feeling of godlikeness
developed still further under the spell of isolation. The fact that he
trod the realm of thought, while all around him men and women grappled
with the problems of war, only accentuated this condition of mind.

He suffered--that was true. He missed the companionship of kindred
spirits, and sometimes his memory would play truant, recalling the
pleasant glitter of sterling silver and conversational electroplate
whic