At last Clarke broke the silence. "You like my studio?" he asked.
The simple question brought Ernest back to reality.
"Like it? Why, it's stunning. It set up in me the queerest train of
thought."
"I, too, have been in a whimsical mood to-night. Fancy, unlike genius,
is an infectious disease."
"What is the peculiar form it assumed in your case?"
"I have been wondering whether all the things that environ us day by day
are, in a measure, fashioning our thought-life. I sometimes think that
even my little mandarin and this monkey-idol which, by the way, I
brought from India, are exerting a mysterious but none the less real
influence upon my work."
"Great God!" Ernest replied, "I have had the identical thought!"
"How very strange!" Clarke exclaimed, with seeming surprise.
"It is said tritely but truly, that great minds travel the same roads,"
Ernest observed, inwardly pleased.
"No," the older man subtly remarked, "but they reach the same
conclusion by a different route."
"And you attach serious importance to our fancy?"
"Why not?"
Clarke was gazing abstractedly at the bust of Balzac.
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