"But where are you going?"
"To a place in South Spain. I can't tell you more. Listen. I believe that I am on the verge of discovering a great secret. It is an amazing thing; I've been working at it with Centeno, that young Spaniard who comes to my rooms. I am going to Spain so that I may work with him in a warm climate."
He rose from his seat excited by the thought of the discovery. He gulped the last of his wine, as though in a sudden fever to be at work. He flung on hat and coat in the same feverish preoccupation.
Roger, who had seen him thus before, knew that he was forgotten. His friend was already in those secret rooms at the top of a house in Queen Square. His spirit was there, bowed over the work with the Spanish scholar; the earthly part of him was a parcel left behind in a restaurant to follow as it might. Words from nowhere floated into Roger's mind. It was as though some of John's attendant spirits had whispered to him: "Your friend is busy with some strange doctrine of the soul," said the whisperer. "This world does not exist for him. You are nothing to him; you are only a little part of the eternal, dragging a caddis-worm's house of greeds. He is set free."
He looked up quickly to see John deep in thought, with a waiter, standing beside him, offering an unnoticed bill. Roger paid the bill. In another minute they were standing in the glare of the Circus, amid tumult and harsh light. Something in the unrhythmical riot broke the dreamer's mood. He looked at Roger absently, as though remembering an event in a past life. A fit of coughing shook him, and left him trembling.
"Your play is a fine thing," he said weakly, as he hailed a hansom. "You are all right. I can't ask you to come round to my rooms; for I am working there with Centeno. I work there far into the night, and I am in rather a mess with packing to-night."
He seemed to pass into his reverie again; for he did not notice Roger's hand. He was muttering to himself, "This is an unreal world; this is an unreal world," between gulps of cigarette smoke. A sudden burst of energy made him enter the cab. Roger gave the cab-man the address, and closed the cab's aprons. His friend lifted a hand languidly and sank back into the gloom. The last that Roger saw of him was a white, immobile mask of a face, rising up from the black pointed beard, which looked so like the beard of an Assyrian king. The cab was hidden from sight among a medley of vehicles before Roger realised that his friend was gone.
It struck Roger then that the evening had brought him very near to romance. He had seen his soul's work shouted down, by the minotaur. Now the man whom he had worshipped was going away to die. More than the pain of losing the friend was the sharpness of jealousy; for why could not he, instead of Centeno, help that spirit in the last transmutation, in the last glory, when the cracking brain cell let in heaven? He felt himself judged, and set aside. For an instant an impulse moved him to creep in upon the secret, up the stairs, through the corridor piled with books, to the dark room, hung with green, where the work went forward. He longed to surprise those conspirators over their secret of the soul, and to be initiated into the mystery, even at the sword's point. He put this thought from him; but the shock of John's parting brought it back again. His spirit seemed to flounder in him. He felt stunned and staggered.
He crossed Shaftesbury Avenue wondering how life was to go on with no O'Neill. He had no thought for his play's failure; this sorrow filled his nature. He paused for an instant on the western sidewalk of the avenue so that he might light a cigarette. As he bent over the flame, some one struck him violently between the shoulders. He turned swiftly, full of anger, to confront a half-drunken man whose face had the peculiar bloated shapelessness of the London sot. The man unjustly claimed, with many filthy words, that Roger had jostled against him, and that he was going to—well, show him different. A little crowd gathered, expecting a fight. When the man's language was at its filthiest, a policeman interfered, bidding the drunkard go home quietly. The man asked how any one could go home quietly with —— toffs running into him. The policeman turned to Roger.
Roger was sickened and disgusted. Charging the man, and causing him to be imprisoned or fined, was not to be thought of. The man was not sober; he had passed into a momentary fury of passion, and had butted blindly like an enraged bull. The mistake, and the foul talk, and the sudden attentions of the crowd at such a moment when he hoped to be alone, gave Roger a feeling of helpless hatred of himself and of modern life. He turned abruptly. His enemy dogged him for a few steps, dropping filthy names, one by one, while some of the crowd followed, hoping that there would be an assault. The pursuit ended with a snarl. The drunkard turned diagonally across the street, so nearly under two motor-cabs that the crowd lost interest in Roger from that instant.