"It's very kind of you to speak in this way," he faltered at length.
"Kind! How the deuce should I speak? But come, we will have this off to a publisher's forthwith. Have you any ideas for the next work?"
"Yes; but so daring that they hardly bear putting into words."
"Try the effect on me."
"I have thought," said Julian, with embarrassment, "of a long poem—an Epic. Virgil wrote of the founding of Rome; her dissolution is as grand a subject. It would mean years of preparation, and again years in the writing. The siege and capture of Rome by Alaric—what do you think?"
"A work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine. But who knows?"
There was high talk in Walcot Square that evening. All unknown to its other inhabitants, the poor lodging-house was converted into a temple of the Muses, and harmonies as from Apollo's lyre throbbed in the hearts of the two friends. The future was their inexhaustible subject, the seed-plot of strange hopes and desires. They talked the night into morning, hardly daunted when perforce they remembered the day's work.