“Can you suggest no possible explanation?”

“Perhaps a stray leaf on my desk a few indications of the plot, a remark—­who knows?  Perhaps thought-matter is floating in the air.  Perhaps—­but we had better not talk of it now.  It would needlessly excite you.”

“You are right,” answered Ernest gloomily, “let us not talk of it.  But whatever may be said, it is a marvellous play.”

“You flatter me.  There is nothing in it that you may not be able to do equally well—­some day.”

“Ah, no,” the boy replied, looking up to Reginald with admiration.  “You are the master.”

XIII

Lazily Ernest stretched his limbs on the beach of Atlantic City.  The sea, that purger of sick souls, had washed away the fever and the fret of the last few days.  The wind was in his hair and the spray was in his breath, while the rays of the sun kissed his bare arms and legs.  He rolled over in the glittering sand in the sheer joy of living.

Now and then a wavelet stole far into the beach, as if to caress him, but pined away ere it could reach its goal.  It was as if the enamoured sea was stretching out its arms to him.  Who knows, perhaps through the clear water some green-eyed nymph, or a young sea-god with the tang of the sea in his hair, was peering amorously at the boy’s red mouth.  The people of the deep love the red warm blood of human kind.  It is always the young that they lure to their watery haunts, never the shrivelled limbs that totter shivering to the grave.

Such fancies came to Ernest as he lay on the shore in his bathing attire, happy, thoughtless,—­animal.

The sun and the sea seemed to him two lovers vying for his favor.  The sudden change of environment had brought complete relaxation and had quieted his rebellious, assertive soul.  He was no longer a solitary unit but one with wind and water, herb and beach and shell.  Almost voluptuously his hand toyed with the hot sand that glided caressingly through his fingers and buried his breast and shoulder under its glittering burden.

A summer girl who passed lowered her eyes coquettishly.  He watched her without stirring.  Even to open his mouth or to smile would have seemed too much exertion.

Thus he lay for hours.  When at length noon drew nigh, it cost him a great effort of will to shake off his drowsy mood and exchange his airy costume for the conventional habilaments of the dining-room.

He had taken lodgings in a fashionable hotel.  An unusual stroke of good luck, hack-work that paid outrageously well, had made it possible for him to idle for a time without a thought of the unpleasant necessity of making money.

One single article to which he signed his name only with reluctance had brought to him more gear than a series of golden sonnets.

“Surely,” he thought, “the social revolution ought to begin from above.  What right has the bricklayer to grumble when he receives for a week’s work almost more than I for a song?”