ty that seemed to guard a secret. What was
the secret? It seemed so near to Paul sometimes, as if he were like a
man very near the edge of some mountain from which he may peep into an
unknown valley. Sometimes it was far away. But it was there, he doubted
not, though it hid itself. It was like a dance of fairies in a forest
glade, which a man could half discern through the screening leaves; but,
when he gains the place, he sees nothing but tall flowers with drooping
bells, bushes set with buds, large-leaved herbs, all with a silent,
secret, smiling air, as though they said, "We have seen, we could tell."

Paul seemed very near this baffling secret at times; in the dewy silence
of mornings, just before the sun comes up, when familiar woods and trees
stand in a sort of musing happiness; at night when the sky is thickly
sown with stars, or when the moon rises in a soft hush and silvers the
sleeping pool; or when the sun goes down in a rich pomp, trailing a
great glow of splendour with him among cloudy islands, all flushed with
fiery red. When the sun withdrew himself thus, flying and flaring to
the west, behind the boughs of leafless trees, what was the hidden
secret presence that stood there as it were finger on lip, inviting yet
denying? Paul knew within himself that if he could but say or sing this,
the world would never forget. But he could not yet.

Then, too, Paul learned the magic of words, the melodious accent of
letters, sometimes so sweet, sometimes so harsh; then the growing
phrase, the word that beckons as it were other words to join it
trippingly; the thought that draws the blood to the brain, and sets the
heart beating swiftly--he learned the words that sound like far-off
bells, or that wake a gentle echo in the spirit, the words that burn
into the heart, and make the hearer ashamed of all that is hard and low.
But he learned, too, that the craftsman in words must not build up his
song word by word, as a man fetches bricks to make a wall; but that he
must see the whole thought clear first, in a kind of divine flash, so
that when he turns for words to write it, he finds them piled to his
hand.

All these things Paul learnt, and day by day he suffered all the sweet
surprises and joys of art. There were days that were not so, when the
strings jangled aimlessly, and seemed to have no soul in them; days when
it appeared that the cloud could not lift, as though light and music
together were dead in the world--but