dusk, and read from the works of the philosopher Mainlaender. Then he
laid the book to one side, and said to himself: "The youth of to-day are
lacerating, devastating themselves.... It is a fearful age. Measure,
proportion, and balance are gone. Every model becomes a caricature. The
individual is absolutely dependent upon himself. The flame is without
container, and threatens to burn the hand that would check it."

In Daniel he had found his brother in fate. Music became his brother in
torture. On seeing his friend lacerated and devastated, he saw twitch
from the eye of Gorgo herself the profoundest of wisdom. But he did not
lay bare his own heart.

One night, after unending conversation had brought them both to
silence--like ships which, tossed about by the winds, at last drift into
the harbour--Benda, taking up with an angry, exasperated remark by
Daniel as it echoed back from the other shore of this silence, said: "We
must not be vain. We dare not usurp a privilege which has no other basis
than our inner task. We must never stand before our own picture. It
seems to me that an artist should be of exalted modesty, and that
without this modesty he is nothing but a more or less remarkable lout."

Daniel looked up at once. Benda's big teeth were visible under his bushy
moustache. He had a habit of pulling his lips apart whenever he was
searching for a really incisive word.

Benda continued: "The great majority of what you call talent is
ignominious. Talent is a feather duster. All that comes from the finger
tips is evil. The man who has a distinct goal and is willing to suffer
in order to reach it, that man we can use. And otherwise--how beautiful
it all is after all! Heaven is above us, the earth is beneath us, and in
between stands immortal man."

Daniel got up, and seized Benda's hand. There was nothing more
vanquishing than Benda's handshake. His good strong right became a vise
in which he shook a man's hand until it became limp, a perfectly
delightful benevolence radiating from his eyes in the meanwhile.

The two men exchanged the fraternal "thou."

VII

Eleanore returned the copy of "Manon Lescaut." When Daniel asked her
how she liked it, she never said a word. Since he thought that it was an
excellent book, he began to scold.

She said: "I cannot read books in which there is so much talk about
love."

He gazed into space in order to allow her voice time to die away.