In addition to this he was a poet: that is to say, he had published two volumes of verse that were so eclectic as to be out of print. At the present time he had stuck midway in his medical career pending the issue of his unhappy passion; and presented the unusual spectacle of a “chronic,” not by force of incompetence, but by choice. In point of fact, he was an unconscious survival from the nineties, and the lady of his choice resembled a creation of Beardsley more than any type commonly known to nature. Edwin was impressed, for the writer of the exhausted _Poems of Passion_ was the first poet that he had met in the flesh. Naturally, St. Aubyn’s attitude towards the first-year man was a little patronising; but Edwin found his mixture of cynicism and melancholy enchanting, and was particularly impressed when Freddie, languidly supporting his sorrows in one of the Common Room easy-chairs, offered him a fill from his pipe. “Oh, by the way, there’s opium in it,” he said casually. Visions of Coleridge and de Quincey invaded Edwin’s mind. He stopped filling his pipe. “Opium? Why on earth do you put opium in it?” “It is an aid to the imagination,” said Freddie, “and it deadens pain.” “Mental pain,” he added significantly, after a pause. “For that alcohol is useless. I’ve tried it.” “I think I’ll have some of my own, if you don’t mind,” said Edwin. “I quite agree with you. It would be much wiser,” said St. Aubyn. “Luckily you have no need for it. _Facilis descensus Averni_.” From that day forward Edwin was always eagerly searching the face and the pupils of Freddie for any symptoms of opium poisoning. He never found any; and W.G., to whom he confided this thrilling incident, assured him that there was nothing in it, that Freddie had probably never smoked opium in his life, and that the whole thing was nothing more than one of the poses that this gentleman adopted for shocking the youthful and bourgeois. The impressive Freddie, according to W.G., was a damned anæmic waster. If only it had not been for the exhausted _Poems of Passion_, Edwin might have agreed with him. The solemn meetings of the panto-night committee engaged Edwin three afternoons a week. As a congregation of amazing bloods they were enthralling but as business gatherings they were more remarkable still. They were held in the saloon bar of a modern public house, all palatial mahogany, red plush and plate-glass, called the White Horse; and the principal business of the day was the consumption of hot whisky with sugar and slices of lemon in it, during which Griffin, armed with a conspicuous note-book, reported on his activities, which appeared mainly to be social.