"I mayn't know what I'm working for
yet, but I believe I'm on the right road. How can I go back?"

"Why not? Milton went back to the Creation, and _he_ was only born in
the seventeenth century. You have had the unspeakable misfortune to be
born in the nineteenth. You must live on your imagination--the world
has nothing for you."

"I believe it _has_ something for me, if I could only find it."

"Well, don't lose too much time in looking for it. Art's long and
life's short, especially modern life; and that's the trouble."

Rickman shook his head. "No; that's not the trouble. It's the other
way about. Life's infinite and art's one. And at first, you know, it's
the infinity that staggers you." He flung himself into a chair
opposite Jewdwine, planted his elbows on the table, and propped his
chin on his hands. He looked as if he saw the infinity he spoke of. "I
can't describe to you," he said, "what it is merely to be alive out
there in the streets, on a sunny day, when the air's all fine watery
gold, and goes dancing and singing into your head like dry champagne.
I've given up alcohol. It isn't really necessary. I got as drunk as a
lord the other day going over Hampstead Heath in a west wind" (he
_looked_ drunk at the mere thought of it). "Does it ever affect _you_
in that way?"

Jewdwine smiled. The wind on Hampstead Heath had never affected him in
that way.

"No. It isn't what you think. I used to go mad about women, just as I
used to drink. I don't seem to care a rap about them now." But his
eyes had a peculiar large and brilliant look, as if he saw the woman
of his desire approaching him. His voice softened. "Don't you know
when the world--all the divine maddening beauty of it--lies naked
before your eyes, and you want to get hold of it--now--this minute,
and instead it gets hold of you, and pulls you every way at
once--don't you know? The thing's got a thousand faces, and two
thousand arms, and ten thousand devils in it."

Jewdwine didn't know. How should he? He had a horror of this forcing
of the sensuous and passionate note. The author of the _Prolegomena to
AEsthetics_ recoiled from "too much temperament." He felt, moreover,
the jealous pang of the master who realizes that he has lost his hold.
This was not that Rickman who used to hang all flushed and fervid on
Jewdwine's words. He remembered how once on an April day, a year ago,
the disciple had turned at the call of woman and of the world, the
call of th