“I must go,” Cardinegh said roughly. “It is my last day. This morning my final arrangements for Noreen. An hour with her--then to the war-office with the revelation. You’ll stay here, son. Stick to these walls--until Dartmore and the boys bring your glory back to you.... I can see them trooping in!... And Noreen--ah, the gladness of her!” Routledge opened wide the windows and stood by while the morning swept in, damp, chill, but cleansing. “Sit down a moment more, Jerry,” he said finally. “I want to ask a favor of you. It is a hard thing, a delicate thing--harder and more delicate than the thing you trusted to me, without asking. There is no other white man whom I would dare ask such a favor.” “Out with it, son.” Cardinegh watched him wonderingly. Routledge sat down and leaned forward, a fine light in his big, calm eyes. “I told you I had passed an interesting night, Jerry. It was more than that--a wonderful night. Thoughts have come to me that never squirmed in mortal brain before. I felt this vast moil of London--my enemy! I felt it gathering about my ears like the _Tai Fung_ in the China sea. It was rich, incomparably rich, the stimulus of a Cæsar--this Herod-hate of seven million souls! I’ve been thinking for hours, Jerry--and I should have been writing--stuff for glory--the great book! Whiskey wouldn’t bring out such work, nor drugs, nor Yogi asceticism. I have glimpsed such work in stars, in battle-smoke, in bivouac fires, in the calm and distances of the monster Himalayas; perhaps in the eyes of women--but glimpses only, Jerry! To-night it came like a steady stream of empyrean fire. I want months of it--months! I would pay half my life to have London and the army hating me this way until the work is done. It’s the stuff that sings in the veins of kings. Give it to me--for the book!” “Wake up! You fool--wake up!” “Listen, old champion,” Routledge went on passionately: “I have spent this life gathering the data of experience. I have crossed the Sahara in the hue and garb of a camel driver; I have lain months a yellow Mohammedan in the huts of Lahore; as a Sannyasi, I have trudged up to the roof of the world. And the fighting, Jerry--Pathan, Zulu, and Burmese; and the revolts--Afghan, Balkan, Manipur, African, Philippine--all these came back, vivid, splendid last night--pictures fit to gild and garnish the Romance of the Open. And, Jerry, I have peered into the mystic lore of India, the World’s Mother--subtly and enticingly to color it all! I want to do this, Jerry, the Book of our Tribe! I shall write it in blood, with pillars of fire leaping up for chapter-heads--if you will only leave this flood of power in my veins--the Hate of London!” Cardinegh, gasping, clutched his hand. “One of us--you or I--is mad----” “Mad, of course,” laughed Routledge. “A man must be a little mad with the inspiration of Keats and the punch of Carlyle banging together in his brain.”