ghtly
and hardly, found his spirits very pure and plentiful; or if he was
sad, it was a clear sadness that had something beautiful within it,
and dwelt not on any past grossness of his own, but upon the thought
that all beautiful things can but live for a time, and must then be
laid away in the darkness and in the cold.

So Paul grew up knowing neither friendship nor love, only stirred at
the sight of a beautiful face, a shapely hand, or a slender form; by a
grateful wonder for what was so fair; untainted by any desire to
master it, or make it his own; living only for his art, and with a
sort of blind devotion to Mark, whom he soon excelled, though he knew
it not. Mark once said to him, when Paul had made a song of some old
forgotten sorrow, "How do you know all this, boy? You have not
suffered, you have not lived!" "Oh," said Paul gaily, knowing it to be
praise, "my heart tells me it is so."

Paul, too, as he grew to manhood, found himself with a voice that was
not loud, but true--a voice that thrilled those who heard it through
and through; but it seemed strange that he felt not what he made other
men feel; rather his music was like a still pool that can reflect all
that is above it, the sombre tree, the birds that fly over, the starry
silence of the night, the angry redness of the dawn.

It was on one of his journeys with Mark that the news of Mistress
Alison's death reached him. Mark told him very carefully and tenderly,
and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress
Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul--for the end had come
very suddenly--Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill
with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at
the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his
thoughts; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it
were, day by day, with earnest effort, the steep ladder of song. He
thought a little upon Mistress Alison, and on all her love and
goodness: but it was with a tranquil sorrow, and not with the grief
and pain of loss. Mark was very gentle with him for awhile; and this
indeed did shame Paul a little, to find himself being used so lovingly
for a sorrow which he was hardly feeling. But he said to himself that
sorrow must come unbidden, and that it was no sorrow that was made
with labour and intention. He was a little angered with himself for
his dullness--but then song was so beautiful, that he co