Somehow the night had passed — somehow in bitterness, in anguish. But it had passed.

Ernest’s lips were parched and sleeplessness had left its trace in the black rings under the eyes, when the next morning he confronted Reginald in the studio.

Reginald was sitting at the writing-table in his most characteristic pose, supporting his head with his hand and looking with clear piercing eyes searchingly at the boy.

“Yes,” he observed, “it’s a most curious psychical phenomenon.”

“You cannot imagine how real it all seemed to me.”

The boy spoke painfully, dazed, as if struck by a blow.

“Even now it is as if something has gone from me, some struggling thought that I cannot —