h.
It was in the streets with their sultry pallor, in the parks and squares
where the dust lay like a grey blight on every green thing. Everywhere
the glare accentuated this toneless melancholy. It was the symbol of the
decadence following the brilliant efflorescence of the season, the
exhaustion after that supreme effort of Society to amuse itself. This
lassitude is felt most by those who have shared least in the amusement,
the workers who must stay behind in the great workshop because they are
too busy or too poor to leave it.

There was one worker, however, who felt nothing of this depression.
Langley Wyndham had reasons for congratulating himself that everybody
was out of town, and that he was left to himself in his rooms in Dover
Street. For one thing, it gave him opportunity for cultivating Miss
Craven's acquaintance. For another, he had now a luxurious leisure in
which to polish up the proofs of his last novel, and to arrange his
ideas for its successor. Compared with this great work, all former
efforts would seem to the taste they had created as so much literary
trifling. Hitherto he had been merely trying his instrument, running his
fingers over the keys in his easy professional way; but these
preliminary flourishes gave no idea of the constructive harmonies to
follow. And now, on a dull evening, some three weeks after Audrey's
dinner-party, he was alone in his study, smoking, as he leaned back in
his easy-chair, in one of those dreamy moods which with him meant
fiction in the making, the tobacco-smoke curling round his head the
Pythian fumes of his inspiration. The study was curiously suggestive of
its owner's inconsistencies. With its silk cushions, Oriental rugs, and
velvet draperies, its lining of books, and writing-table heaped with
manuscripts and proofs, it witnessed to his impartial love of luxury and
hard work. It told other secrets too. The cigar-case on the table beside
him was embroidered by a woman's hand, the initials L. W. worked with
gold thread in a raised monogram. Two or three photographs of pretty
women were stuck by their corners behind the big looking-glass over the
fireplace, together with invitation cards, frivolous little notes, and
ball programmes. On one end of the mantel-board there was a photograph
of Knowles; on the other, the one nearest Wyndham's chair, an empty
frame of solid silver. The photograph and the frame represented the
friendship and the love of his life.

To-night he