he large full composition, seemed to grow clearer while
they climbed higher, as if they had a conscious benevolent answer for
the upward gaze of men.

"How it straightens things out and blows away one's vapours--anything
that's _done_!" said Nick; while his companion exclaimed blandly and
affectionately:

"The dear old thing!"

"The great point's to do something, instead of muddling and questioning;
and, by Jove, it makes me want to!"

"Want to build a cathedral?" Nash inquired.

"Yes, just that."

"It's you who puzzle _me_ then, my dear fellow. You can't build them out
of words."

"What is it the great poets do?" asked Nick.

"_Their_ words are ideas--their words are images, enchanting
collocations and unforgettable signs. But the verbiage of parliamentary
speeches--!"

"Well," said Nick with a candid, reflective sigh, "you can rear a great
structure of many things--not only of stones and timbers and painted
glass." They walked round this example of one, pausing, criticising,
admiring, and discussing; mingling the grave with the gay and paradox
with contemplation. Behind and at the sides the huge, dusky vessel of
the church seemed to dip into the Seine or rise out of it, floating
expansively--a ship of stone with its flying buttresses thrown forth
like an array of mighty oars. Nick Dormer lingered near it in joy, in
soothing content, as if it had been the temple of a faith so dear to him
that there was peace and security in its precinct. And there was comfort
too and consolation of the same sort in the company at this moment of
Nash's equal appreciation, of his response, by his own signs, to the
great effect. He took it all in so and then so gave it all out that Nick
was reminded of the radiance his boyish admiration had found in him of
old, the easy grasp of everything of that kind. "Everything of that
kind" was to Nick's sense the description of a wide and bright domain.

They crossed to the farther side of the river, where the influence of
the Gothic monument threw a distinction even over the Parisian
smartnesses--the municipal rule and measure, the importunate
symmetries, the "handsomeness" of everything, the extravagance of
gaslight, the perpetual click on the neat bridges. In front of a quiet
little cafe on the left bank Gabriel Nash said, "Let's sit down"--he was
always ready to sit down. It was a friendly establishment and an
unfashionable quarter, far away from the caravan-series; there were the