Well, it is not much good discussing Frank in public like this.  The people who are kind enough to read his life—­or, rather, the six months of it with which this book deals—­must form their own opinion of him.  Probably a good many will think him a fool.  I daresay he was; but I think I like that kind of folly.  Other people may think him simply obstinate and tiresome.  Well, I like obstinacy of that sort, and I do not find him tiresome.  Everyone must form their own views, and I have a perfect right to form mine, which I am glad to know coincide with your own.  After all, you knew him better than anyone else.

I went to see Gertie Trustcott, as you suggested, but I didn’t get any help from her.  I think she is the most suburban person I have ever met.  She could tell me nothing whatever new about him; she could only corroborate what you yourself had told me, and what the diaries and other papers contained.  I did not stay long with Miss Trustcott.

And now, my dear friend, I must ask you to accept this book from me, and to make the best of it.  Of course, I have had to conjecture a great deal, and to embroider even more; but it is no more than embroidery.  I have not touched the fabric itself which you put into my hands; and anyone who cares to pull out the threads I have inserted can do so if they will, without any fear of the thing falling to pieces.

I have to thank you for many pleasurable and even emotional hours.  The offering which I present to you now is the only return I can make.

I am,
Ever yours sincerely,
Robert Hugh Benson.

P.S.—­We’ve paneled a new room since you were last at Hare Street.  Come and see it soon and sleep in it.  We want you badly.  And I want to talk a great deal more about Frank.

P.P.S.—­I hear that her ladyship has gone back to live with her father; she tried the Dower House in Westmoreland, but seems to have found it lonely.  Is that true?  It’ll be rather difficult for Dick, won’t it?

NONE OTHER GODS

PART I

CHAPTER I

(I)

“I think you’re behaving like an absolute idiot,” said Jack Kirkby indignantly.

Frank grinned pleasantly, and added his left foot to his right one in the broad window-seat.

These two young men were sitting in one of the most pleasant places in all the world in which to sit on a summer evening—­in a ground-floor room looking out upon the Great Court of Trinity College, Cambridge.  It was in that short space of time, between six and seven, during which the Great Court is largely deserted.  The athletes and the dawdlers have not yet returned from field and river; and Fellows and other persons, young enough to know better, who think that a summer evening was created for the reading