Up the stone stairs of the turret staircase like a whirlwind, and Gav burst tempestuously into David’s room. He was reading quietly by the casement window.
“What’s the book, David?” he asked.
“Baudelaire, Gav,” said David solemnly.
“Oh, that’s all rot!” cried Gaveston with a peal of fresh springlike laughter. And, seizing the exquisitely bound volume of the famous French symboliste, he pitched it far out into the quad. The affrighted rooks cawed and wheeled round it. “Just about fit for them!” laughed Gav.
But poor David was puzzled.
“You gave it me yourself, Gavvy,” he said reproachfully.
“Ages and ages ago, David.”
“It was only——”
“Now listen, boy! That’s dead, that world. We’ve done with being decadent and fin de siècle and all that. Now we’re going to be commencement de siècle. All that London can give, we have got. Paris holds no secrets for us.”
He raised his hands in the attitude of a Corinthian statue of Apollo of the best period as he went on, the spring in his voice, the morning sun flaming on his hair.