his contempt for the feverish incompetence of the modern
school, whose ears had been corrupted by Wagner's filthy din; and all he
could manage to achieve were seeming the banal inspirations of
Mendelssohn. Guy was like an alchemist perpetually on the verge of
discovering the stone that will transmute base metals to gold as he
tried to find the secret by which such an one as Beethoven could purify
with art the most violent emotions of humanity, yet always preserve
their intrinsic value. He craved the secret which even the most obscure
Elizabethans seemed to have possessed, that unearthly power of harmony
which could fuse all baseness in a glittering song. Passion had never
lost itself in arid decoration when they sang; nor yet had it ever
betrayed itself with that impudently direct appeal these modern lyrists
made, these shameless Rousseaus of verse. Yet he was as bad as any of
them, for he was either like them when he tried to write his heart, or
he expired in the mere sound of words like the degenerate ruck of the
Caroline heirs to a great tradition. He was almost on the point of
proclaiming his final failure, and if at that moment he could have
received from his father the offer to come and teach small boys at Fox
Hall, he would have gone.

And yet would he have gone? Could he abandon the delight of being with
Pauline? The nearer he came to confessing his failure the more he longed
for her company. He was surely now in the midway of the thorny path of
love, and whether he progressed or retreated he could not escape the
spines. Well had he said to himself that night in May: "_La belle Dame
sans mercy hath thee in thrall._"

All the fire and fever of his present life on the outskirts of a haunted
country was for his imagination alone. However timidly his pen
approached those dreams, they vanished; and whenever his pen betrayed
him Guy turned despairingly again to Pauline herself. These days without
her were every day more unendurable. Once he had been content to talk
about her to Mrs. Grey and her sisters, to listen to their praise of
her; now every word they spoke wounded his pride. This madness of love
could only feed itself in the very dungeons of his mind; and unless she
were with him it did so horribly gorge itself that, if he had not
swiftly seen her again, the madness would have broken the bars of its
prison and ridden him like a hag.

It was when Guy had worked himself to this pitch of desire for the
remedy o