During the first few days following O'Rourke's sensational meeting with Miss Hudson, Hemming saw very little of that headstrong young man, for the lover spent his afternoons and evenings in making up for lost time, and his mornings in rearing Spanish castles. At first Hemming took joy in his friend's happiness--then came envy, and bleak disgust at his own case. He sought refuge in hard work, and toiled every morning with a half-heart for the subject in hand, and ears pricked up for O'Rourke's babble of joy and content. And behold, at the end of a morning's grind, twenty pages for the fire. Even his novel came to a standstill. The chapter of romance, which had the joyful meeting of O'Rourke and Miss Hudson for its inspiration, seemed to have no connection with the rest of the narrative, and no excuse for existence save its own beauty. He wondered if this chapter were a story in itself--a breath of life's real poetry, too fine and rare for marketing. One night, alone in the sitting-room brooding above the manuscript, he tried to rewrite it in verse. A new restlessness had him by the heart, lifting him, one moment, to the heights of confidence, only to drag him down, the next, to the depths of uncertainty and longing. Three lines pulsed up to his brain, and he wrote them down. Then he opened his sitting-room window and looked out. The lights in the square gleamed down on the wet pavement. The black tree-tops threshed in the wind. A cab sped down from Fifth Avenue, under the arch. A policeman paused beneath him, and yawned at the bright entrance.