e at the dear price of never
permitting myself to care seriously for anything else. I might not
dare to dissipate my energies by taking any part in the drama I was
attempting to re-write, because I must so jealously conserve all the
force that was in me for the perfection of my lovelier version. That
may not be the best way of making books, but it is the only one that
was possible for me. I had so little natural talent, you see," said
Charteris, wistfully, "and I was anxious to do so much with it. So I
had always to be careful. It has been rather lonely, my dear. Now,
looking back, it seems to me that the part I have played in all other
people's lives has been the role of a tourist who enters a cafe
chantant, a fortress, or a cathedral, with much the same forlorn sense
of detachment, and observes what there is to see that may be worth
remembering, and takes a note or two, perhaps, and then leaves the
place forever. Yes, that is how I served the Dream and that is how I
got my books. They are very beautiful books, I think, but they cost me
fifteen years of human living and human intimacy, and they are hardly
worth so much."

He turned to her, and his voice changed. "Oh, I was wrong, all wrong,
and chance is kindlier than I deserve. For I have wandered after
unprofitable gods, like a man blundering through a day of mist and fog,
and I win home now in its golden sunset. I have laughed very much, my
dear, but I was never happy until to-night. The Dream, as I now know,
is not best served by making parodies of it, and it does not greatly
matter after all whether a book be an epic or a directory. What really
matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we
can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple,
generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely
of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this.
My dear, if I were worthy to kneel and kiss the dust you tread in I
would do it. As it happens, I am not worthy. Pauline, there was a
time when you and I were young together, when we aspired, when life
passed as if it were to the measures of a noble music--a
heart-wringing, an obdurate, an intolerable music, it might be, but
always a lofty music. One strutted, no doubt--it was because one knew
oneself to be indomitable. Eh, it is true I have won all I asked of
life, very horribly true. All that I asked, poor fool! oh, I am weary
of