The Making of a Soul | Page 6

had a shock----"
He broke off abruptly.
"There, I'm not going to whine about it. It's over, done with, and a new
chapter's started." He yawned ostentatiously. "Barry, I shall call upon
your good offices as best man yet--unless you hurry up and marry Miss
Lynn first."
"Oh, Olive and I are in no hurry!" He laughed a trifle awkwardly. "You
see, she is so young--only just eighteen--and her people won't hear of it
for a couple of years."

"Well, that will soon pass." He turned towards the door. "I must be off
now, Barry--it's late, and I'm pretty fagged. See you in the morning, I
suppose?"
"Of course. I say, Owen, sure you won't stay here to-night? I can give
you a bed, you know."
"Thanks awfully, old chap, but I'd rather get home. I've heaps of things
to see to. Thanks all the same."
Still talking, the friends crossed the hall, and Barry unlatched the door
of the flat.
"Well, so-long, Barry. Awfully glad to have seen you again." He
gripped the younger man's hand, and Barry understood what the grip
implied.
"Good-night, Owen. See you to-morrow."
Two minutes later Owen had disappeared round a bend in the staircase;
and Barry went slowly back into his sitting-room, feeling curiously
tired, as though he had been indulging in some violent physical
exercise.
"Poor old chap! What a beast that girl is!" He had never liked Miss
Rees, and now felt, naturally, that his dislike was justified. "But I hope
to goodness he doesn't go and do anything rash. He's got a pretty good
head on him, though, and I daresay a lot of this talk is mere bravado."
He turned off the light and went into his bedroom. On the
dressing-table stood a silver frame holding a photograph; and Barry
took up the frame and studied the portrait carefully.
"Olive, you'd never play me a trick like that, would you! My God, I
hope you don't! It would just about kill me to have to lose faith in you!"
The deep eyes looked up at him candidly, the sweet mouth seemed to
smile; and with a sudden blissful certainty that the original of the

photograph was as true and straightforward as the picture proclaimed
her to be, Barry put down the frame again, and began, whistling, to
prepare for bed.
CHAPTER III
A month later Barry relinquished his post as secretary to the man he
called "old Joliffe," and announced himself to be from henceforth at
Owen's disposal.
The review to which the latter had alluded was a long-standing ideal of
Owen Rose's. From his earliest youth he had been attracted by the
journalistic side of life, and seeing no means of editing a London daily
at an early age, he had wisely determined to learn the whole business of
newspaper journalism from the beginning. At the ago of eighteen he
was sub-editor on a big provincial daily; but his brilliant and versatile
intelligence soon wearied of the monotony of the life, and he came to
London to demand the right of admittance into Fleet Street.
At that time, luckily for himself, he was on terms of friendship with a
well-known editor; and what his own talent might have found difficulty
in obtaining was placed unexpectedly within his reach. Before he was
twenty-five he was well-known in the newspaper world; and since, on
his twenty-fifth birthday, he came into possession of the comfortable
income left to him by his father many years before, he was able to turn
his back definitely on any soul-destroying drudgery and devote his time
and brains to better work. Beneath his journalistic ability there was a
sound and delicate literary flair; and it had long been his dream to
found a magazine which, while neither commonplace nor unduly
"precious," should hit a happy mean between the cheap magazines
devoted to more or less poor fiction, and the somewhat pompous
reviews which held up the light of learning and research in a rather
severe and forbidding fashion.
He would have a little fiction--of the highest order. A comparatively
large portion of the review was to be devoted to poetry, both as
regarded original verse and the critical appreciation of modern poetry

as a whole. Articles on art, music, the drama, were all to find a home in
his pages; and there was to be a judicious sprinkling of science to add a
little ballast to the lighter freight.
But what he intended to be the striking feature of the review was the
tone which was to prevail throughout. It was to be warm, eager,
enthusiastic, optimistic. He intended himself to write a series of articles
dealing with the future in relation to the past. Each subject--music,
literature, humanitarianism, mysticism, and a dozen others--would be
treated in turn; and