s opinion. That was what it meant, and he who was proudly
conscious of having succeeded thus, could well afford to regard the
lives of others as half-finished and imperfect; he alone was at one
with himself, his life alone was a harmonious whole.

To Maurice Guest, all this mattered little or not at all; it was merely
the unavoidable introduction. The chief thing was that the old man had
known the world which Maurice so desired to know; he had seen life, had
lived much of his youth in foreign lands, and had the conversation been
skilfully set agoing in this direction, he would lay a wrinkled hand on
his listener's shoulder, and tell him of this shadowy past, with short
hoarse chuckles of pleasure and reminiscence, which invariably ended in
a cough. He painted it in vivid colours, and with the unconscious
heightening of effect that comes natural to one who looks back upon a
happy past, from which the countless pricks and stings that make up
reality have faded, leaving in their place a sense of dreamy, unreal
brightness, like that of sunset upon distant hills. He told him of
Germany, and the gay, careless years he had spent there, working at his
art, years of inspiriting, untrammelled progress; told him of famous
musicians he had seen and known, of great theatre performances at which
he had assisted, of stirring PREMIERES, long since forgotten, of
burning youthful enthusiasms, of nights sleepless with holy excitement,
and days of fruitful, meditative idleness. Under the spell of these
reminiscences, he seemed to come into touch again with life, and his
eyes lit with a spark of the old fire. At moments, he forgot his
companion altogether, and gazed long and silently before him, nodding
and smiling to himself at the memories he had stirred up in his brain,
memories of things that had long ceased to be, of people who had long
been quiet and unassertive beneath their handful of earth, but for whom
alone, the brave, fair world had once seemed to exist. Then he would
lose himself among strange names, in vague histories of those who had
borne these names, and of what they had become in their subsequent
journeyings towards the light, for which they had set out, side by
side, with so much ardour (and oftenest what he had to tell was a
modest mediocrity); but the greater number of them had lost sight one
of the other; the most inseparable friends had, once parted, soon
forgotten. And the bluish smoke sent upwards as he talked, in cl