ty town held two good friends of his:
Kashkine and Balakirev, each one hard at his own work; but delighted at
the opportunity of drawing Ivan a little out of his melancholy. In time,
indeed, they came to think it banished, and the young man at peace. He
was merely gathering strength to renew his battle: that intangible fight
against circumstance and his own nature that has been waged by every
fine and sensitive soul since the world began, and Abel bethought him of
his lamb-offering. Meantime, Ivan's secret but ardent desire to work
again worthily was fulfilled on a day that was to become one of the
vividest of his memories.

It was a morning of mid-July, sweet-aired, hot-sunned, the waters of the
lake just feathered with a breath that turned the pulsating satin to a
white-sheened, crinkly azure velvet. About eight of the morning the
three men, each brain teeming with its own ambitions and its peculiar
appreciation of the mysterious Mother, started off for one of their
habitual rambles. Ivan was in a mood whimsically frank, but changeful;
and he blew the conversation this way and that out of sheer wantonness,
till presently it touched a point on which Balakirev suddenly laid a
detaining hand. Gregoriev had been analyzing the character of
Ophelia--the delicate, fantastic disorder of her pathetic mentality; and
something, some specially delicate comprehension of this particular
conception of the greatest poet, caused the burly Russian to say,
softly:

"She is abstract enough--elusive, rainbow-hued enough, for your
harmonies, Ivan Mikhailovitch. Behold a tone-poem ready to your hand!"

Ivan halted, quickly lifting his head, as an animal who scents
something: "You think so?--An entire tone-poem?" The tone was alive with
attentiveness.

"Why not?"

"Ah--a little too fragile--too--wanting in discord." A moment's pause.
Then he broke out in another voice: "But you, Balakirev,--it is your
idea: your theme. You felt it, therefore it belongs to you. Subjects
borrowed--mechanically worked up--bah! It is the worst prostitution of
art." And Ivan tried hard for conviction. Indeed it was quite true that
he had no faith in other men's ideas for his own use. Yet within sixty
seconds of contemplation, _this_ theme had suddenly taken possession of
him in a manner joyously well-known. Already the necessary contrast, the
shadow-background of Ophelia's silver brightness--the melancholy of her
Prince-repudiator, was tingling through him.