The next day Ernest wrote a letter of more or less superficial
tenderness to Ethel. She had wounded his pride by proving victorious in
the end over his passion and hers; besides, he was in the throes of
work. When after the third day no answer came, he was inclined to feel
aggrieved. It was plain now that she had not cared for him in the least,
but had simply played with him for lack of another toy. A flush of shame
rose to his cheeks at the thought. He began to analyse his own emotions,
and stunned, if not stabbed, his passion step by step. Work was calling
to him. It was that which gave life its meaning, not the love of a
season. How far away, how unreal, she now seemed to him. Yes, she was
right, he had not cared deeply; and his novel, too, would be written
only _at_ her. It was the heroine of his story that absorbed his
interest, not the living prototype.
Once in a conversation with Reginald he touched upon the subject.
Reginald held that modern taste no longer permitted even the
photographer to portray life as it is, but insisted upon an individual
visualisation. "No man," he remarked, "was ever translated bodily into
fiction. In contradiction to life, art is a process of artificial
selection."
Bearing in mind this motive, Ernest went to work to mould from the
material in hand a new Ethel, more real than life. Unfortunately he
found little time to devote to his novel. It was only when, after a good
day's work, a pile of copy for a magazine lay on his desk, that he could
think of concentrating his mind upon "Leontina." The result was that
when he went to bed his imagination was busy with the plan of his book,
and the creatures of his own brain laid their fingers on his eyelid so
that he could not sleep.
When at last sheer weariness overcame him, his mind was still at work,
not in orderly sequence but along trails monstrous and grotesque.
Hobgoblins seemed to steal through the hall, and leering incubi
oppressed his soul with terrible burdens. In the morning he awoke
unrested. The tan vanished from his face and little lines appeared in
the corners of his mouth. It was as if his nervous vitality were sapped
from him in some unaccountable way. He became excited, hysterical. Often
at night when he wrote his pot-boilers for the magazines, fear stood
behind his seat, and only the buzzing of the elevator outside brought
him back to himself.
In one of his morbid moods he wrote a sonnet which he showed to Reginald
after the latter's return from a short trip out of town. Reginald read
it, looking at the boy with a curious, lurking expression.
_O gentle Sleep, turn not thy face away,
But place thy finger on my brow, and take
All burthens from me and all dreams that ache;
Upon mine eyes a cooling balsam lay,
Seeing I am aweary of the day.
But, lo! thy lips are ashen and they quake.
What spectral vision sees thou that can shake
Thy sweet composure, and thy heart dismay?
Perhaps some murderer's cruel eye agleam
Is fixed upon me, or some monstrous dream
Might bring such fearful guilt upon the head
Of my unvigilant soul as would arouse
The Borgian snake from her envenomed bed,
Or startle Nero in his golden house._
"Good stuff," Reginald remarked, laying down the manuscript; "when did
you write it?"
"The night when you were out of town," Ernest rejoined.
"I see," Reginald replied.
There was something startling in his intonation that at once aroused
Ernest's attention.
"What do you see?" he asked quickly.
"Nothing," Reginald replied, with immovable calm, "only that your state
of nerves is still far from satisfactory."