end.
She took such great delight in having him with us. It seemed only to
happen that he went with us. It was not always so. And it was all quite
natural.

We had thus become friends in the profoundest sense. Once she referred
to Pinturicchio saying: "If you feel that you could have loved that
man, don't you see that the same feeling can exist between a man and a
woman? I am talking of that unity of two minds out of which the finest
emotions come; and in the case of artists the noblest works. Love is not
just passional love, just this flame that burns so brightly and then
dies. It may be a flame that has no material sustenance, or so slight
that we are not subtle enough to discern it; a flame that feeds on
flame, unites with another flame and grows brighter for the union; and
finds in the flame a substitute for oil. Friendship is what I mean--or
love may be a better word. Here in Rome among the old shrines and
temples where the anemones and violets bloom so profusely, before the
sculptured faces of Zeus and Aphrodite and Apollo and Bacchus, one
dreams one's self into intuitions of the old gods, and the lovely faiths
of the ancient world. And I go sometimes alone with a book to the
Borghese or to the Capitoline and there let my imagination wander in
re-creation of the visions of life and the soul that came as
interpretations to the ancients. I have lately been reading a book on
the cult of Orpheus, the Pagan Christ, one of the loveliest figures of
the Greeks. It made me believe somehow that Christ never lived, that he
is only a creation of the anonymous imagination of a hungering world.
For surely Orpheus did not live, and how closely he resembles Christ as
an embodiment of the heart's aspiration to free itself from the material
and to rise into a realm of pure beauty, understanding, devotion--all
lovely things. My friend, I was thinking of you all the while. And if
you could have been a friend of Pinturicchio in the noblest sense, why
not of me? I am not trying to play with words or with ideas, or to
perplex you, or to excite your doubts or your desires. I think you have
never had a friend. What, after all, could you find in a soul so
masculine, so lacking in intuition as Douglas; upon whom you have poured
your admiration for all these years? Has it not been for lack of some
one better to whom you could give your heart? That is why I wish that
you and I could find an enduring and inspiring union in a mutual
interest in