In the confused tangle of his fancy he saw Laura like some great white flower, growing out of reach, yet not entirely beyond endeavour, and the ladder that went up to her was made by his own immediate successes.

Then the footlights before his play swam in his picture and he heard already the applause of crowded houses and felt in his head the intoxication of his triumph.

Act by act, scene by scene, he rehearsed in fancy his great drama, seeing the players throng before the footlights and seeing, too, Laura applauding softly from a stage box at the side.

He had had moments of despondency over his idea, had grovelled in abject despair during trying periods of execution, but now all uncertainty--all misgivings evaporated like an obscuring fog before a burst of light.

The light, indeed, had at the moment the full radiance of a great red glow such as he had seen used for effective purposes upon the stage--and just as every object of scenery had taken, for the time, a portion of the transfiguring suffusion--so now the external ugly details among which he moved were bathed in the high coloured light of his imagination.
But if the end is sometimes long in coming, it comes at last even to the visions of youth, and when his tired limbs finally dragged his soaring spirit to earth, he took a passing car and came home to luncheon.