fatal issues, like the silence of ardent
thought. Heyst remained alone in the big room. The girl seeing him
take up a book, had retreated to her chamber. Heyst sat down under
his father's portrait; and the abominable calumny crept back into his
recollection. The taste of it came on his lips, nauseating and corrosive
like some kinds of poison. He was tempted to spit on the floor, naively,
in sheer unsophisticated disgust of the physical sensation. He shook his
head, surprised at himself. He was not used to receive his intellectual
impressions in that way--reflected in movements of carnal emotion. He
stirred impatiently in his chair, and raised the book to his eyes with
both hands. It was one of his father's. He opened it haphazard, and
his eyes fell on the middle of the page. The elder Heyst had written of
everything in many books--of space and of time, of animals and of stars;
analysing ideas and actions, the laughter and the frowns of men, and the
grimaces of their agony. The son read, shrinking into himself, composing
his face as if under the author's eye, with a vivid consciousness of
the portrait on his right hand, a little above his head; a wonderful
presence in its heavy frame on the flimsy wall of mats, looking exiled
and at home, out of place and masterful, in the painted immobility of
profile.

And Heyst, the son, read:

Of the stratagems of life the most cruel is the consolation of love--the
most subtle, too; for the desire is the bed of dreams.

He turned the pages of the little volume, "Storm and Dust," glancing
here and there at the broken text of reflections, maxims, short phrases,
enigmatical sometimes and sometimes eloquent. It seemed to him that he
was hearing his father's voice, speaking and ceasing to speak again.
Startled at first, he ended by finding a charm in the illusion. He
abandoned himself to the half-belief that something of his father dwelt
yet on earth--a ghostly voice, audible to the ear of his own flesh and
blood. With what strange serenity, mingled with terrors, had that man
considered the universal nothingness! He had plunged into it headlong,
perhaps to render death, the answer that faced one at every inquiry,
more supportable.

Heyst stirred, and the ghostly voice ceased; but his eyes followed the
words on the last page of the book:

Men of tormented conscience, or of a criminal imagination, are aware of
much that minds of a peaceful, resigned cast do not even suspect. It is
no