Father Payne gave a groan. "Yes, it is a muddle!" he said. "But one thing I
feel clear about--that a beautiful thing like this means a sense of joy
somewhere: some happiness went to the making of things which in a sense are
quite useless, but are unutterably lovely all the same. Beauty implies
consciousness--but come, we are neglecting our business. Give me the other
stone at once!"

I gave it him, and he cracked it. "Very disappointing!" he said. "I made
sure there was a beautiful stone, but it is all solid--only a flaky sort of
jelly--it's no use at all!"

He threw it aside, but carefully gathered up the fragments of the
crystalline stone. "Don't tell of me!" he said, looking at me whimsically.
"This is the sort of nonsense which our sensible friends won't understand.
But now that I know that you care about stones, we will have a rare hunt
together one of these days. But mind--no stuff about geology! It's beauty
that we are in search of, you and I."

XXIX

EARLY LIFE

One day, to my surprise and delight, Father Payne indulged in some personal
reminiscences about his early life. He did not as a rule do this. He used
to say that it was the surest sign of decadence to think much about the
past. "Sometimes when I wake early," he said, "I find myself going back to
my childhood, and living through scene after scene. It's not wholesome--I
always know I am a little out of sorts when I do that--it is only one
degree better than making plans about the future!"

However, on this occasion he was very communicative. He had been talking
about Ruskin, and he said: "Do you remember in _Praeterita_ how
Ruskin, writing about his sheltered and complacent childhood, describes how
entirely he lived in the pleasure of _sight_? He noticed everything,
the shapes and colours of things, the almond blossom, the ants that made
nests in the garden walk, the things they saw in their travels. He was
entirely absorbed in sense-impressions. Well, that threw a light on my own
life, because it was exactly what happened to me as a child. I lived wholly
in observation. I had no mind and very little heart. I suppose that I had
so much to do looking at everything, getting the shapes and the textures
and the qualities of everything by heart, that I had no time to think about
ideas and emotions. I had a very lonely childhood, you know, brought up in
the country by my mother, who was rather an invalid, my father being dead.
I had no companions