t were figured out at a fair interest on the capital,
would be something fabulous," he declared. "You see, the place was
extravagantly built--without any regard to cost. The dressing rooms, as
you may have noticed, are wonderful, and all the appointments are unique.
I don't fancy the old man's ever had a quarter's rent yet that's paid him
one per cent, on the money. See you later, perhaps, Mr. Ware," the young
man concluded, setting down his tumbler. "I'm going in to have a grill.
Why don't you come along?"

Philip hesitated for a second and then, somewhat to the other's surprise,
assented. He was conscious that he had been, perhaps, just a little
unresponsive to the many courtesies which had been offered him here and
at the other kindred clubs. They had been ready to receive him with open
arms, this little fraternity of brain-workers, and his response had been,
perhaps, a little doubtful, not from any lack of appreciation but partly
from that curious diffidence, so hard to understand but so fundamentally
English, and partly because of that queer sense of being an impostor
which sometimes swept over him, a sense that he was, after all, only
the ghost of another man, living a subjective life; that, reason it out
however he might, there was something of the fraud in any personality
he might adopt. And yet, deep down in his heart he was conscious of so
earnest a desire to be really one of them, this good-natured,
good-hearted, gay-spirited little throng, with their delightful
intimacies, their keen interest in each other's welfare, their potent,
almost mysterious geniality, which seemed to draw the stranger of kindred
tastes so closely under its influence. Philip, as he sat at the long
table with a dozen or so other men, did his best that night to break
through the fetters, tried hard to remember that his place amongst them,
after all, was honest enough. They were writers and actors and
journalists. Well, he too was a writer. He had written a play which they
had welcomed with open arms, as they had done him. In this world of
Bohemia, if anywhere, he surely had a right to lift up his head and
breathe--and he would do it. He sat with them, smoking and talking, until
the little company began to thin out, establishing all the time a new
reputation, doing a great deal to dissipate that little sense of
disappointment which his former non-responsiveness had created.

"He's a damned good fellow, after all," one of them declared, a