that is to be
found in belonging, though but momentarily and illusively, to the
aristocracy of genius. To find the just word for all our emotions,
to realise that our most trivial thought is illimitably creative,
to feel that it is our lot to keep life's gladdest promises, to
see the great souls of men and women, steadfast in existence as
stars in a windless pool--these, indeed, are no ordinary
pleasures. Moreover, these hours of our illusory greatness endow
us in their passing with a melancholy that is not tainted with
bitteress. We have nothing to regret; we are in truth the richer
for our rare adventure. We have been permitted to explore the
ultimate possibilities of our nature, and if we might not keep
this newly-discovered territory, at least we did not return from
our travels with empty hands. Something of the glamour lingers,
something perhaps of the wisdom, and it is with a heightened
passion, a fiercer enthusiasm, that we set ourselves once more to
our life-long task of chalking pink salmon and pinker sunsets on
the pavements of the world.

I once met an Englishman in the forest that starts outside Brussels
and stretches for a long day's journey across the hills. We found a
little cafe under the trees, and sat in the sun talking about modern
English literature all the afternoon. In this way we discovered that
we had a common standpoint from which we judged works of art, though
our judgments differed pleasantly and provided us with materials
for agreeable discussion. By the time we had divided three bottles of
Gueze Lambic, the noble beer of Belgium, we had already sketched out a
scheme for the ideal literary newspaper. In other words, we had
achieved friendship.

When the afternoon grew suddenly cold, the Englishman led me off to
tea at his house, which was half-way up the hill out of Woluwe. It
was one of those modern country cottages that Belgian architects
steal openly and without shame from their English confreres. We were
met at the garden gate by his daughter, a dark-haired girl of
fifteen or sixteen, so unreasonably beautiful that she made a
disillusioned scribbler feel like a sad line out of one of the
saddest poems of Francis Thompson. In my mind I christened her
Monica, because I did not like her real name. The house, with its
old furniture, its library, where the choice of books was clearly
dictated by individual prejudices and affections, and its
unambitious parade of domestic happiness, height