'And I made it, Vicar; you see, I've made it.' He was not exactly nettled, but he wanted a word of recognition for his success. 'But you know why, don't you?' he added, ashamed the same moment. There was a pause, during which both looked closely at their broken nuts. From one of the men came a sigh.

'Yes,' resumed the older man presently, 'I remember your great dream perfectly well, and a noble one it was too. Its fulfilment now, I suppose, lies well within your reach? You have the means to carry it out, eh? You have indeed been truly blessed.' He eyed him again with uncommon keenness, though a smile ran from the eyes and mouth even up to the forehead and silvery hair. 'The world, I see, has not yet poisoned you. To carry it out as you once explained it to me would be indeed success. If I remember rightly,' he added, 'it was a—er—a Scheme for Disabled—'

Rogers interrupted him quickly. 'And I am full of the same big dream still,' he repeated almost shyly. 'The money I have made I regard as lent to me for investment. I wish to use it, to give it away as one gives flowers. I feel sure—'

He stopped abruptly, caught by the glow of enthusiasm that had leaped into the other's face with a strangely beautiful expression.

'You never did anything by halves, I remember,' the Vicar said, looking at him proudly. 'You were always in earnest, even in your play, and I don't mind telling you that I've often prayed for something of that zeal of yours—that zeal for others. It's a remarkable gift. You will never bury it, will you?' He spoke eagerly, passionately, leaning forward a little across the table. 'Few have it nowadays; it grows rarer with the luxury and self-seeking of the age. It struck me so in you as a boy, that even your sprites worked not for themselves but for others—your Dustman, your Sweep, your absurd Lamplighter, all were busy doing wonderful things to help their neighbours, all, too, without reward.'

Rogers flushed like a boy. But he felt the thrill of his dream course through him like great fires. Wherein was any single thing in the world worth doing, any object of life worth following, unless as means to an end, and that end helping some one else. One's own little personal dreams became exhausted in a few years, endeavours for self smothered beneath the rain of disappointments; but others, and work for others, this was endless and inexhaustible.

'I've sometimes thought,' he heard the older man going on, 'that in the dusk I saw'—his voice lowered and he glanced towards the windows where the rose trees stood like little figures, cloaked and bonneted with beauty beneath the stars—'that I saw your Dustman scattering his golden powder as he came softly up the path, and that some of it reached my own eyes, too; or that your swift Lamplighter lent me a moment his gold-tipped rod of office so that I might light fires of hope in suffering hearts here in this tiny world of my own parish. Your dreadful Head Gardener, too! And your Song of the Blue-Eyes Fairy,' he added slyly, almost mischievously, 'you remember that, I wonder?'

'H'm—a little, yes—something,' replied Rogers confusedly. 'It was a dreadful doggerel. But I've got a secretary now,' he continued hurriedly and in rather a louder voice,' a fellow named Minks, a jewel really of a secretary he is—and he, I believe, can write real—'

'It was charming enough for us all to have remembered it, anyhow,' the Vicar stopped him, smiling at his blushes,' and for May—or was it Joan? dear me, how I do forget names!—to have set it to music. She had a little gift that way, you may remember; and, before she took up teaching she wrote one or two little things like that.'

'Ah, did she really?' murmured the other. He scarcely knew what he was saying, for a mist of blue had risen before his eyes, and in it he was seeing pictures. 'The Spell of Blue, wasn't it, or something like that?' he said a moment later, 'blue, the colour of beauty in flowers, sea, sky, distance—the childhood colour par excellence?'