He came to have an unpleasant and mean desire to sit the others out always--he knew that the moment the door closed upon him they tore his weaknesses to pieces, and garbled his motives. And still the masterpiece did not come.... Netherby Gomme, lunching with him at the club, ended by walking back with him to his rooms; and, out of the earshot of the precious company, he warned the youth not to fling his fresh ideas to these people if he would weave them into his own art. “These are the jackals of the arts, Noll,” said he grimly--“they filch the ideas of other men--they follow hot-foot on the latest success, turning out indifferent copies of the master-wits--they will suck your brains, vampire-like. These are they who, when a genius appears, cannot lift their eyes to his magnificence, to the beauty of his imagination, can but seek out the sources of his inspiration and laboriously accuse him of the footsteps in which he had trod. Be rid of the crew. Or, keep your quaint conceits for your workshop. Give them but the chips.... You gave those fellows this very day the scheme for a large work of art--they have not the brains to see the potentialities that lie latent in an idea--so some fellow of them will make a catchy magazine essay of it--catch the newness of it and exploit it. They are as vulgar thieves as though they stole your pence.... They are no help to you--I have done my best work even in my small way, as many a really big man has done his, in the back room of a dingy house, looking out upon a brick wall. What is in you is in you--you can benefit nothing from these others.... If you have companions, have splendid companions--the big rich-souled man. Friendship is the top of ambition. These others will steal your very tears.” So the humorist with his arm in Noll’s, affectionately; and left Noll brooding at the threshold of his simple home.... Netherby spoke prophecy. A month or two later, an article in a leading review, signed by Mr. Fosse, won some notice by its youthful daring, indiscretion, and invention--Noll sighed to see his own wits could be so shabbily clothed. Noll took up the magazine by veriest chance at the club. He read the sorry thing, and flung it upon the table; and, as he flung it down, Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre entered the room. “Ah, Aubrey,” cried he to the languid poet, with loud voice that was ever pitched to carry his carefully wrought spontaneities to the listening world: “I am sorry to be late, but, for pleasant hours with Lady Persimmon, I could almost be content to appear ill-bred. She moves me--so few women move me.” He sat down beside the poet, and slapped the poetic leg giddily: “For a handsome woman one must neglect even a poet, eh? Ha-ha! even the handsomest and the chastest of them all love their squeeze. Not that I--you know--eh?” “Tsh!” muttered Aubrey, who had been vainly attempting to check the flow of Myre’s conceit--“Baddlesmere, over there, is her cousin.”