ld
Who buys her with the spirit's gold.

Thus only shall you find your pearl,
O seeker of the Golden Girl!
She trod but now the grassy way,
A vision of eternal May.

The devil take his impudence! "Only the pure in heart," "clean,
unsullied thought." How like the cheek of twenty! And all the same
how true! Dear lad, how true! Certainly, the child is father to the
man. Dirige nos! O sage of the Golden Twenties!

As I meditatively folded up the pretty bit of writing, I made a
resolution; but it was one of such importance that not only is another
chapter needed to do it honour, but it may well inaugurate another book
of this strange uneventful history.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I DECIDE TO BE YOUNG AGAIN

Yes, I said to myself, the lad is quite right; I will follow his
advice. I'm afraid I was in danger of developing into a sad cynic,
with a taste for the humour of this world. What should have been a
lofty high-souled pilgrimage, only less transcendental than that of the
Holy Grail itself, has so far failed, no doubt, because I have
undertaken it too much in the wanton spirit of a troubadour.

I will grow young and serious again. Yes, why not? I will take a vow
of Youth. One's age is entirely a matter of the imagination. From this
moment I am no longer thirty. Thirty falls from me like a hideous
dream. My back straightens again at the thought; my silvering hair
blackens once more; my eyes, a few moments ago lacklustre and sunken,
grow bright and full again, and the whites are clear as the finest
porcelain. Veni, veni, Mephistophile! your Faust is young
again,--young, young, and, with a boy's heart, open once more to all
the influences of the mighty world.

I bring down my stick upon the ground with a mighty ring of resolution,
and the miracle is done. Who would take me for thirty now? From this
moment I abjure pessimism and cynicism in all their forms, put from my
mind all considerations of the complexities of human life, unravel all
by a triumphant optimism which no statistics can abash or criticism
dishearten. I likewise undertake to divest myself entirely of any
sense of humour that may have developed within me during the baneful
experiences of the last ten years, and, in short, will consent for the
future to be nothing that is not perfectly perfect and pure. These, I
take it, are the fundamental conditions of being young again.

And as for the Quest, it shall fort