He became very imaginative, enjoying his mood enormously, letting it act as a mental purge. Aventures that he would discover for the next Meeting swept through him. The stress and fever of creative fancy, stirred by the deep travailing of the elements behind that curtain of night, was upon him. Then, sleep being far away, he went to the writing-table, where Nixie’s deft hands had everything prepared, lit a second candle, and began to write. ‘I’ll write “How I climbed the Scaffolding of the Night,”’ he murmured; ‘for I feel it true within me. I feel as if I were part of the night—part of all this beautiful soft darkness.’ But, before he had written a dozen lines, he stopped and fell to listening again, staring past the steady candle-flames out into the open. The stillness was profound. A single ivy-leaf rattled sharply all by itself on the wall outside his window. He felt as if that leaf tapped faintly upon his own brain. By a curious process known only to the poetic temperament, he passed on to _feel with_ everything about him—as though some portion of himself actually merged in with the silence, with the perfumes of trees and garden, with the voice of that little tapping leaf. And, in proportion as he realised this, he transferred the magic of it to his tale. He found the words that fitted his conception like a natural skin. He knew in some measure the satisfaction and relief of expression. ‘A year ago—a month ago,’ he thought with delight, ‘this would have been impossible to me. Nixie has taught me so much already!’ What he really wanted, of course, were the living, flaming words of poetry. But this he knew was denied him; perhaps the fire of inspiration did not burn steadily enough; perhaps the intellectual foundation was not there. At any rate, he could only do his best and struggle with the prose, and this he did with intense pleasure. After a time he laid his pen down and fell to thinking again—the kind of reverie that dramatises a mood before the inner vision. And another inspiration came upon him with its sudden little glory; he realised vividly that _within_ himself a region existed where all that he desired might find fulfilment; where yearnings, dreams, desires might come true. There existed this inner place within where he might visualise all he most wished for into a state of reality. The workshop of the creative imagination was its vestibule.... Whether or not he could put it into words for others to realise was merely a question of craft.... He must have sat thinking in this way much longer than he knew, for the candles had burnt down quite low when at length he bestirred himself with a mighty yawn and rose to go to bed. But hardly had he begun to unfasten his crumpled black tie when something made him pause.