It was Spinks who explained the nature of the connection.
Poor Spinks, who had made the suggestion with an almost suicidally
honourable intention, was to his immense astonishment merely sworn at
for his interference. And when Flossie brought Keith his tea that
evening she found him in a most ungentlemanly humour.
She waited demurely for a pause in the storm that raged round Spinks
and his confounded wine-merchant. She cast a significant glance at the
table strewn at that moment with the rough draft of Rickman's tragedy.
(Flossie couldn't understand why he could never write a thing out
clearly from the first, nor why she shouldn't write it for him at his
dictation.)
"It's all very well, Keith," said she, "but if _you_ can't do more,
_I_ must."
Before she left the room it was understood between them that Flossie
would renounce her wine-merchant, and that they would be married, if
possible, some time in the autumn. He felt curiously shaken by that
interview.
He spent the evening reading over what he had written, vainly trying
to recall his inspiration, to kindle himself anew at his own flame.
Last night he had had more inspiration than he could do with; his
ideas had come upon him with a rush, in a singing torrent of light.
His mind had been then almost intolerably luminous; now, there was
twilight on its high parts and darkness over the face of its deep. His
ideas, arrested in mid-air, had been flung down into the deep; and
from the farther shore he caught, as it were, the flutter of a gown
and the light laughter of a fugitive Muse.
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