immured, and with no exercise more profitable than writing, when yonder,
as all youth knew, the way lay open to the unimaginable splendors of
Antan. It was, for that matter, an unthrifty wantonness for Gerald
Musgrave’s young observer to be lingering here, in the cold company of
books and china animals, when yonder (as all youth knew) along the
pleasant way to Antan were waiting so many dear, fond, loving women
eager to cheer and to inspire and to trust and to give all to speed the
high-hearted adventurer in that glorious journeying toward his appointed
kingdom. Decidedly, the old fellow was lost: for now he was infatuated
by the contentment to be got out of writing, which remained always, in
its own way, as bedrugging as the contentment to be got out of
domesticity; and there was no help for this preposterous, doomed,
chuckling Gerald Musgrave,—who would always now be finding one or
another rather beautiful idea to play with, and who must remain, so long
as life remained, a poet whose one real delight was to shape and to play
with puppets....
Yet it mattered very little, to any person who was already for every
practical purpose a reigning monarch, that all which pertained to this
Gerald Musgrave was somewhat droll, the smiling red-haired boy decided,
as he passed toward Evadne of the Dusk, and out of sight of that
gray-fringed bald head bent over that incessant pen scratching.
[Illustration: THE END]
TRANSCRIBER NOTES
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.