"Am I dreaming, or are there visions about?" he murmured.

Urged, seemingly, by a sort of curiosity, he surveyed the room a second
time through the same pane of glass. Being tall, he had to stoop
slightly. Within, on the opposite side of the ledge, he saw the tiny
brass candlestick with its inch of candle which he had used over-night
while searching for a volume of Scott in the book-case lining the
neighboring wall. Somehow, this simplest of domestic objects brought a
thrill of recollection.

"Oh, dash it all!" he growled good-humoredly, "I'm getting nervy. I must
chuck this bad habit of working late, and use the blessed hours of
daylight."

Yet, as he sauntered down the lawn toward the stream, he knew well that
he would do nothing of the sort. He loved that time of peace between
ten at night and one in the morning. His thoughts ran vagrom then.
Fantasies took shape under his pen which, in the cold light of morning,
looked unreal and nebulous, though he had the good sense to restrain
criticism within strict limits, and corrected style rather than matter.
He was a writer, an essayist with no slight leaven of the poet, and had
learnt early that the everyday world held naught in common with the
brooding of the soul.

But he was no long-haired dreamer of impossible things. Erect and
square-shouldered, he had passed through Sandhurst into the army, a
profession abandoned because of its humdrum nature, when an unexpectedly
"fat" legacy rendered him independent. He looked exactly what he was, a
healthy, clean-minded young Englishman, with a physique that led to
occasional bouts of fox-hunting and Alpine climbing, and a taste in