Yes, it was the right stuff, he felt sure--and authentic too. Why, the æsthetic effort had stimulated him. There was one more to do. And he remembered his untasted cocktail, tasted it, and forgot his weariness. For nearly an hour poem after poem flowed incontinent from his pen. There were twenty-two in all, but from the glittering galaxy he chose but one. It was indeed a starry gem--and all his own. _To One Whom and Whither I Wot Not_ Since morrow sees our endermost adieu, I’ll have no crying or sighing haggardly Out of the dark void. But Gargantuan gauds I’ll lay on your white body. _Lutany_ _Shall soothe our slumbers._ Then for me and you A knell. And quietude thereafterwards. He read it, and read it again. Yes, it stood the test. And musing he thought how Hérédia would have liked the shape of it, and how Mallarmé would have loved to attempt just those rhythms, how Rops would have delighted to illustrate it, and how Finden, perhaps, or Finck, would have made music for it in some minor mode and with strange fantastic counterpoints.… After a light breakfast Gaveston went round in person to the printer. He handed him the fateful packet of manuscript. “You will have it on sale on Monday? We have promised the public.” “Of course, sir.” The die was cast into Rubicon.… * * * * * Monday came, and with it of course the unparallelable success of _The Mongoose_. By nine o’clock the boys and decrepit vendors engaged for its distribution had perforce to be replaced by stalwart commissionaires who could withstand the frantic mobbing of impatient purchasers. All that day, and well on into Tuesday night, the printing-press in Holywell was a-roaring; bales upon bales poured out hot from the linotype; motor-vans dashed serriedly towards the station where the mail-trains stood awaiting the provincial consignments. Gaveston was not ungratified. He could feel the pulse of Oxford beating in his own. He was universally feted, save in the fast disappearing Liberal Club, which, by Thursday, could only boast its honorary and corresponding members; he was caricatured, but respectfully, in the _University Gazette_; he was thrice, but in vain, invited to stand as a candidate for the library committee of the Union; and the chairman of the Boating Club offered him an honorary Blue. But his head was not turned by the exuberance and gusto and brio which surged around him. He remained simple, unaffected, friendly; daily with a laugh he would put all the credit on David’s deprecating shoulders; nightly he would cable reports of his progressive triumphs to his mother, who was passing the winter on Coney Island and making a deep impression on the Wall Street Five Hundred.