He may, indeed, have reflected with some complacency that in spite of
everything, his great classic drama, _Helen in Leuce_, was lying
finished in the dressing-table drawer in his bedroom, and that for the
last month those very modern poems that he called _Saturnalia_ had
been careering through the columns of _The Planet_. But at the moment
he was mainly supported by the coming of Easter.
CHAPTER III
The scene of the tragedy, that shop in the Strand, was well-lit and
well-appointed. But he, Savage Keith Rickman, had much preferred the
dark little second-hand shop in the City where he had laboured as a
boy. There was something soothing in its very obscurity and
retirement. He could sit there for an hour at a time, peacefully
reading his Homer. In that agreeable dusty twilight, outward forms
were dimmed with familiarity and dirt. His dreams took shape before
him, they came and went at will, undisturbed by any gross collision
with reality. There was hardly any part of it that was not consecrated
by some divine visitation. It was in the corner by the window,
standing on a step-ladder and fumbling in the darkness for a copy of
Demosthenes, _De Corona_, that he lit on his first Idea. From his seat
behind the counter, staring, as was his custom, into the recess where
the coal-scuttle was, he first saw the immortal face of Helen in
Leuce.
Here, all that beautiful world of thought lay open to the terrific
invasion of things.
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