ssed, and to suppress
all that Common Sense would have carried forward, to sacrifice all the
inter-relations with others that constituted his outer life--even as
he had already sacrificed the expression of his corresponding inner
life; retaining only his emotional unrest.

And the seductive picture of the scented serpent-woman, ever smiling
at him now with gleaming teeth, symbolised the future for him, and
alone preserved the continuity of interest that stimulated him to go
forward at all. His attitude, in some respects, was analogous to that
of a romantic boy playing with the idea of running away from home,
drawn by visions of marvellous adventures in strange lands. The sequel
might be vague and in the clouds, but that very fact only made it the
more fascinating.

His temperament had said to him that evening: "Let your business still
be poetry, but weave it out of life instead of out of words." The
thought resurged in his brain and then it struck him as crystallising
his whole feeling about the future course of his existence, as
furnishing the key to his position.

To make of life a fantasy, a poem, a dream! The idea was an
illumination.

But beyond a half-considered intention of changing to humbler rooms
and hiding therein from his world, he did not meditate any definite
activity. The feeling at the bottom of his mind was rather that events
would shape themselves. To this attitude of passivity his whole life
had tended. His will-strength had gone into his passionate desire of
poetic achievement, and were it not that he had, so to speak, grown
into relation with others, his life would have been utterly static.
The movement of their lives alone had taken his along. He had not the
least idea now how he was going to become acquainted with the strange
woman who filled his thoughts, but, without actually translating his
feelings on the point into definite terms, he counted it as a
certainty that a path would somehow be opened. It pleased him, too, to
think that he owed his cognisance of her existence to that first
impulse which had caused him to write to Ingram. That fantastic
initiation had set in motion fantastic life-waves that were now
flowing back to him.

For others the regularities of existence, the steady round of work,
the care and hoarding of money; for him the mystery and the colour of
life!

And in a flash of insight he seemed to understand that the poet in him
had already asserted itself in his life as