"
"Try the effect on me."
"I have thought," said Julian, with embarrassment, "of a long poem
--an Epic. Virgil wrote of the founding of Rome; her dissolution is
as grand a subject. It would mean years of preparation, and again
years in the writing. The siege and capture of Rome by Alaric--
what do you think?"
"A work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of
wine. But who knows?"
There was high talk in Walcot Square that evening. All unknown to
its other inhabitants, the poor lodging-house was converted into a
temple of the Muses, and harmonies as from Apollo's lyre throbbed in
the hearts of the two friends. The future was their inexhaustible
subject, the seed-plot of strange hopes and desires. They talked the
night into morning, hardly daunted when perforce they remembered the
day's work.
CHAPTER X
THE WAY OUT
The ruling spirit of the Academy was Mrs. Tootle. Her husband's
constitutional headache, and yet more constitutional laziness, left
to her almost exclusively the congenial task of guiding the
household, and even of disciplining the school. In lesson-time she
would even flit about the classrooms, and not scruple to administer
sharp rebukes to a teacher whose pupils were disorderly, the effect
of this naturally being to make confusion worse confounded.
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