these days were few; and Paul
growing active and strong, caring little what he ate and drank, tasting
no wine, because it fevered him at first, and then left him ill at ease,
knowing no evil or luxurious thoughts, sleeping lightly and hardly,
found his spirits very pure and plentiful; or if he was sad, it was a
clear sadness that had something beautiful within it, and dwelt not on
any past grossness of his own, but upon the thought that all beautiful
things can but live for a time, and must then be laid away in the
darkness and in the cold.

So Paul grew up knowing neither friendship nor love, only stirred at
the sight of a beautiful face, a shapely hand, or a slender form; by a
grateful wonder for what was so fair; untainted by any desire to master
it, or make it his own; living only for his art, and with a sort of
blind devotion to Mark, whom he soon excelled, though he knew it not.
Mark once said to him, when Paul had made a song of some old forgotten
sorrow, "How do you know all this, boy? You have not suffered, you have
not lived!" "Oh," said Paul gaily, knowing it to be praise, "my heart
tells me it is so."

Paul, too, as he grew to manhood, found himself with a voice that was
not loud, but true--a voice that thrilled those who heard it through and
through; but it seemed strange that he felt not what he made other men
feel; rather his music was like a still pool that can reflect all that
is above it, the sombre tree, the birds that fly over, the starry
silence of the night, the angry redness of the dawn.

It was on one of his journeys with Mark that the news of Mistress
Alison's death reached him. Mark told him very carefully and tenderly,
and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress
Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul--for the end had come
very suddenly--Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill
with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the
House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he
was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it were, day by
day, with earnest effort, the steep ladder of song. He thought a little
upon Mistress Alison, and on all her love and goodness: but it was with
a tranquil sorrow, and not with the grief and pain of loss. Mark was
very gentle with him for awhile; and this indeed did shame Paul a
little, to find himself being used so lovingly for a sorrow which he was
hardly fe