The poet lay silent a while, and then he turned to his lawyer with the look of an old friendship. Indeed, his friendship for his lawyer, was, odd as it may sound, one of the realities of his unearthly life.
“Friend,” he said, “I am afraid it is almost time for us also to say good-bye. God bless you—for all. Look after—them, won’t you?” and he waved his hand toward his wife’s quarters. “Good-bye....”
“But,” said his friend, “will you have no one with you?”
“Don’t you hear the turning of the tide?” answered the poet.
“No one?” reiterated the lawyer, agonised out of his professional demeanour.
“No one!” answered Wasteneys, rising commandingly in his bed, and sweeping his hand across the volumes at its foot—“No one—but my children!”
THE BUTTERFLY OF DREAMS
IT was said that a tragic disappointment accounted for young Lord Laleham’s curious passion for butterflies. Actually there was no such explanation, or, of course, any need of it; but pursuits out of the common naturally demand uncommon excuses—for the common mind; and it was evident to the watchful critics of Lord Laleham’s career that nothing short of a great sorrow could have driven him to so trivial a means of alleviation. According to others, this dainty passion—which might well have subjected him to the contempt of his fellows, had he not been able to give a somewhat formidable physical account of himself—was to be put down as due to one of those strains of freakishness liable to break out in old families. No one, of course, dreamed that Laleham could care for butterfly-hunting for its own sake, except those entomologists for whom his collection was famous throughout the world, authoritative, classical; for Lord Laleham was one of the handsomest and richest of young English peers, and as difficult for match-making mothers to catch as one of his own butterflies—surely the last man in the world to seek the humble laurel of the lepidopterist.