m to leave. At his own request,
blankets had been spread for Durwent on the floor, and after a hot bath
he had rolled up for the night close to the fire. Johnston Smyth had
also disdained the offer of a bed and ensconced himself on the couch,
where he lay on his back and uttered vagrant philosophies on a vast
number of subjects.

Wishing his strangely assorted guests a good night's repose, Selwyn had
retired to his own room shortly after midnight, but, tired as he was,
sleep refused to come. Like an etcher planning a series of scenes to
be depicted, his mind summoned the various incidents of the night in a
tedious cycle. The huddled figure at the foot of Cleopatra's steps;
the fantastic airiness of Smyth with his shredded umbrella; the smoky
atmosphere of Archibald's, with its strange gathering of derelicts; the
two chance acquaintances spending the night in the adjoining room--what
vivid, disjointed cameos they were! If there was such a thing as Fate,
what meaning could there be in their having met? Or was their meeting
as purposeless as that of which some poet had once written--two pieces
of plank-wood touching in mid-ocean and drifting eternally?

It seemed that the low voices of the others had been going on for more
than an hour when the sense of absolute stillness told Selwyn that he
must have fallen asleep for an interval. He listened for their voices,
but nothing could be heard except the sleet driven against the windows,
and a far-away clock striking the hour of two.

Wondering if his visitors were comfortable, he rose from his bed, and
creeping softly to the living-room door, opened it enough to look in.

Smyth's heavy breathing, not made any lighter by his having his head
completely covered by bed-clothes, indicated that the futurist was in
the realm of Morpheus. Durwent was curled up cosily by the fire, the
blankets over him rising and subsiding slightly, conforming to his
deep, tranquil breaths.

In the light of the fire, and with the warm glow of the skin caused by
its heat and the refreshing bath, the pallor of dissipation had left
the boy's face. In the musing curve of his full-blooded lips and in
the corners of his closed eyes there was just the suggestion of a
smile--the smile of a child tired from play. There was such refinement
in the delicate nostrils dilating almost imperceptibly with the intake
of each breath, and such spiritual smoothness in his brow contrasting
with the glowing tin