With which bitter sarcasm, uttered half mockingly, half in good earnest, she left him and returned to her guests. Not very long afterward, he having sought and found Villiers, and suggested to him that it was time to make a move homeward, approached her in company with his friend, and bade her farewell.
"I don't think we shall see you often in society, Mr. Alwyn"--she said, rather wistfully, as she gave him her hand,--"You are too much of a Titan among pigmies!"
He flushed and waved aside the remark with a few playful words; unlike his Former Self, if there was anything in the world he shrank from, it was flattery, or what seemed like flattery. Once outside the house he drew a long breath of relief, and glanced gratefully up at the sky, bright with the glistening multitude of stars. Thank God, there were worlds in that glorious expanse of ether peopled with loftier types of being than what is called Humanity! Villiers looked at him questioningly: "Tired of your own celebrity, Alwyn?" he asked, taking him by the arm,--"Are the pleasures of Fame already exhausted?"
Alwyn smiled,--he thought of the fame of Sah-luma, Laureate bard of Al-kyris!
"Nay, if the dream that I told you of had any meaning at all"--he replied--"then I enjoyed and exhausted those pleasures long ago! Perhaps that is the reason why my 'celebrity' seems such a poor and tame circumstance now. But I was not thinking of myself,--I was wondering whether, after all, the slight power I have attained can be of much use to others. I am only one against many."
"Nevertheless, there is an old maxim which says that one hero makes a thousand"--said Villiers quietly--"And it is an undeniable fact that the vastest number ever counted, begins at the very beginning with ONE!"
Alwyn met his smiling, earnest eyes with a quick, responsive light in his own, and the two friends walked the rest of the way home in silence.