to help you."

"They don't believe I can do anything but write nonsense."

"Well, clever nonsense is worth writing. It's better than stodgy sense:
literature is blocked up with that. Why not follow their advice?"

"Because I don't believe they are right. I'm not a clown; I don't mean
to be. Because a man has a sense of humour it doesn't follow he has
nothing else. That is only one of my gifts, and by no means the highest.
I have knowledge of human nature, poetry, dramatic instinct. I mean to
prove it to you all. Vane's the only man that understands me."

Dan lit his pipe. "Have you made up your mind to go?"

"Of course I have. It's an opportunity that doesn't occur twice.
'There's a tide in the affairs--"

"Thanks," interrupted Dan; "I've heard it before. Well, if you've made
up your mind, there's an end of the matter. Good luck to you! You are
young, and it's easier to learn things then than later."

"You talk," I answered, "as if you were old enough to be my
grandfather."

He smiled and laid both hands upon my shoulders. "So I am," he said,
"quite old enough, little boy Paul. Don't be angry; you'll always be
little Paul to me." He put his hands in his pockets and strolled to the
window.

"What'll you do?" I enquired. "Will you keep on these rooms?"

"No," he replied. "I shall accept an offer that has been made to me to
take the sub-editorship of a big Yorkshire paper. It is an important
position and will give me experience."

"You'll never be happy mewed up in a provincial town," I told him. "I
shall want a London address, and I can easily afford it. Let's keep them
on together."

He shook his head. "It wouldn't be the same thing," he said.

So there came a morning when we said good-bye. Before Dan returned from
the office I should be gone. They had been pleasant months that we had
spent together in these pretty rooms. Though my life was calling to
me full of hope, I felt the pain of leaving them. Two years is a long
period in a young man's life, when the sap is running swiftly. My
affections had already taken root there. The green leaves in summer, in
winter the bare branches of the square, the sparrows that chirped about
the window-sills, the quiet peace of the great house, Dan, kindly old
Deleglise: around them my fibres clung, closer than I had known. The
Lady of the train: she managed it now less clumsily. Her hands and
feet had grown smaller, her elbows rounder. I found myself smiling as
I though