's circle like a burning rock
hurled from the mouth of a crater; he fell into Chelsea again. Esther
Levenson had come back from the States and was casting about for a
play. She sought out Grimshaw and with her presence, her grace and
pallor and seduction, lured him into his old ways. "The leaves are
yellow," he said to her, "but still they dance in a south wind. The
altar fires are ash and grass has grown upon the temple floor---- I
have been away too long. Get me my pipe, you laughing dryad, and I
will play for you."

He played for her and all England heard. Dagmar heard and pretended
acquiescence. According to her lights, she was magnificent--she
invited Esther Levenson to Broadenham, the Grimshaw place in Kent, nor
did she wince when the actress accepted. When I got back to England,
Dagmar was fighting for his soul with all the weapons she had. I went
to see her in her cool little town house, that house so typical of
her, so untouched by Grimshaw. And, looking at me with steady eyes,
she said: "I'm sorry Cecil isn't here. He's writing again--a play--for
Esther Levenson, who was Simonetta, you remember?"

I promised you a ghost story. If it is slow in coming, it is because
all these things have a bearing on the mysterious, the extraordinary
things that happened----

You probably know about the last phase of Grimshaw's career--who
doesn't? There is something fascinating about the escapades of a
famous man, but when he happens also to be a great poet, we cannot
forget his very human sins--in them he is akin to us.

Not all you have heard and read about Grimshaw's career is true. But
the best you can say of him is bad enough. He squandered his own
fortune first--on Esther Levenson and the production of "The Sunken
City"--and then stole ruthlessly from Dagmar; that is, until she found
legal ways to put a stop to it. We had passed into Edward's reign and
the decadence which ended in the war had already set in--Grimshaw was
the last of the "pomegranate school," the first of the bolder, more
sinister futurists. A frank hedonist. An intellectual voluptuary. He
set the pace, and a whole tribe of idolaters and imitators panted at
his heels. They copied his yellow waistcoats, his chrysanthemums, his
eye-glass, his bellow. Nice young men, otherwise sane, let their hair
grow long like their idol's and professed themselves unbelievers.
Unbelievers in what? God save us! Ten years later most of them were
wading through the mud o