; sometimes flashing out with a quick gesture of impatience or gusto,
enjoying life, every moment and every detail. His quick eyes, roving
about, took in each smallest point, not in the weary feverish way in
which I apprehend a new scene, but as though he liked everything new
and unfamiliar, like an unsated child. He greeted Maud and the children
with a kind of chivalrous tenderness and intimacy, as though he loved
all pretty and tender things, and took joy in their nearness. He held
Alec between his knees, and played with him while he talked. The
children took possession of him, as if they had known him all their
lives. And yet there was no touch of pose, no consciousness of
greatness or vigour about him. He was as humble, grateful, interested,
as though he were a poor stranger dependent on our bounty. I asked him
in a quiet moment about his work. "No, I am writing nothing," he said
with a smile, "I have said all I have got to say,"--and then with a
sudden humorous flash, "though I believe I should be able to write more
if I could get decent paper and respectable type to print my work." I
ventured to ask if he did not feel any desire to write? "No," he said,
"frankly I do not--the world is so full of pleasant things to do and
hear and see, that I sometimes think myself almost a fool for having
spent so much time in scribbling. Do you know," he went on, "a
delicious story I picked up the other day? A man was travelling in some
God-forsaken out-of-the-way place--I believe it was the Andes--and he
fell in with an old podgy Roman priest who was going everywhere, in a
state of perpetual fatigue, taking long expeditions every day, and
returning worn-out in the evening, but perfectly content. The man saw a
good deal of the priest, and asked him what he was doing. The priest
smiled and said, 'Well, I will tell you. I had an illness some time ago
and believed that I was going to die. One evening--I was half
unconscious--I thought I saw some one standing by my bed. I looked, and
it was a young man with a beautiful and rather severe face, whom I knew
to be an angel, who was gazing at me rather strangely. I thought it was
the messenger of death, and--for I was wishing to be gone and have done
with it all--I said something to him about being ready to depart--and
then added that I was waiting hopefully to see the joys of Paradise,
the glory of the saints in light. He looked at me rather fixedly, and
said, "I do not know why you should