."

"I am quite happy," said Yvonne in the listless voice, and presently she
went up to her room, Paul looking after her in a troubled way. He was
uneasily searching his memory for a clue to the significance of that
expression, vaguely familiar but unexpected, which he had noticed in
Yvonne's face. He lighted his pipe and went into the study.

Paul already was at work upon the second phase of his huge task. He was
seeking to prove that the arts had taken the place of the inspired
prophets and sibyls of old, that they were not reflections of the soul
of a nation but were expressions of the creative Will--the _Od_ of Baron
Reichenbach--and were in fact not effects but causes. Not only did he
claim this for the avowed philosophers, but also, in some degree, for
every writer, composer, painter or sculptor. In Russian literature he
perceived a foreshadowing of the doom of Tzardom and imminent
catastrophe. In the literature of France and England he sought to divine
the future. The fervent imperialism of Kipling stirred his emotions, but
left him spiritually cold. Patriotism was the mother of self-sacrifice,
but also of murder, and Paul distrusted all forces which made for
intolerance. The delicate word-painting of Pierre Loti, with its
typically French genius for exalting the trivial, Paul studied
carefully. He found it to resemble the art of those patient, impassive
Japanese craftsmen who draw and colour some exquisite trifling design, a
bird, a palm tree, and then cut the picture in half in order to fit it
into a panel of some quaint little lacquered cabinet as full of
unexpected cupboards and drawers as the Cretan Labyrinth was full of
turnings. He studied the books of the living as Egypt's priests were
wont to study _The Book of the Dead_, pondering upon Arnold Bennett, who
could produce atmosphere without the use of colour, and H. G. Wells who
thought aloud. In the hectic genius of D'Annunzio he sought in vain the
spirit of Italy. He perceived in those glowing pages the hand of a man
possessed, and should have been prepared to find his MSS. written in
penmanship other than his own, like those of Madame Blavatsky's _Isis
Unveiled_.

"It all means something, Don," he said one day. "We have been granted an
insight to the psychology of the German people, which has enabled us to
trace the thread running through their literature, art and music. Oscar
Wilde, who wrote, with a style dipped in ambergris, was truly a
manifestat