The House of the Vampire

ucted Ernest into his studio. It was a large, luxuriously

object, from picture to statue. Despite seemingly incongruous

nts of Mona Lisa. And from a corner a little rococo lady peered coquettishly at the gray image of an Egyptian sphinx. There was a picture o

zac!" Ernest exclaim

d Reginald, "th

Clarke's character. Our gods are o

and Sha

esteemed, in one breath with the mighty master of song, whose great gaunt shadow, thrown aga

no less exquisite taste than the Elizabethan, his own personality under the splendid raiment of his art. They certainly we

ginald Clarke's life. A man's soul, like the chameleon, takes colour from its environment. Even comparative trif

It seemed to Ernest, under the spell of this passing fancy, as though each vase, each picture, each curio in the room, was reflected in Clarke's work. In a long-queued, porcelain Chinese mandarin he distinctly recognised a quaint

the silence. "You lik

on brought Ernest

ing. It set up in me the

l mood to-night. Fancy, unlike g

liar form it assu

g our thought-life. I sometimes think that even my little mandarin and this monkey-idol which, by the

eplied, "I have had t

Clarke exclaimed, wi

great minds travel the same roads,

rked, "but they reach the same

serious importan

y n

abstractedly at

degree. But, strange to say, it was evil that attracted him most. He absorbed it as a sponge absorbs water; perhaps because there was so little of it in his own make-u

it with a master-hand. Creation is a divine prerogative. Re-creation, infinitely more wonderful than mere calling into existence, is the prerogative of the poet. Shakespeare took his colours from many palettes. That is why he is so great, and why his work is incredibly greater t

e. He was, indeed, a master of the spoken word, and possessed a mira