atic is aware of his mental aberration.

Andrea was seized with terror. Better--far better be dead! Never, as at
this moment, had he so fully grasped the divine nature of that _gift_,
never had the _spark_ of genius appeared to him so sacred. His whole
being was shaken to its foundations by the mere suggestion that that
gift might be destroyed, that spark extinguished. Better to die!

He lifted his head and shook off his inertia, then he went down to the
park and walked slowly under the trees, unable to form a definite plan.
A light breeze rippled through the tree tops, now and again the leaves
rustled as if a band of squirrels were passing through them; patches of
blue sky gleamed between the branches like eyes beneath their lids.
Arrived at a favourite spot of his, a sort of tiny _lucus_ presided over
by a four-fronted Hermes plunged in quadruple meditation, he stopped and
seated himself on the grass, with his back against the pedestal of the
statue and his face turned to the sea. Before him the tree-trunks,
straight but of uneven height, like the pipes of the great god Pan,
intercepted his view of the sea; all around him the acanthus spread the
exquisite grace of its foliage, symmetrical as the capitals of
Callimachus.

He thought of the words of Salamis in the _Story of the Hermaphrodite_,

'Noble acanthus, in the woods of Earth
Tokens of peace, high-flowering coronals,
Of most pure form; O ye, the slender basket
That Silence weaves with light, untroubled hand
To gather up the flowers of woody dreams,
What virtue have ye poured on this fair youth
Out of those dusky and sweet-smelling leaves?
Naked he sleeps; his arm supports his head.'

Other lines came back to him, and yet others--a riot of verse. His soul
was filled with the music of rhymes and rhythmic measures. He was
overjoyed; coming to him thus spontaneously and unexpectedly, this
poetic agitation caused him inexpressible happiness. And he gave ear to
the music, delighting himself in rich imagery, in rare epithets, in the
luminous metaphors, the exquisite harmonies, the subtle refinements
which distinguished his metrical style and the mysterious artifices of
the endecasyllabic verse learned from the admirable poets of the
fourteenth century, and more especially from Petrarch. Once more the
magic spell of versification subjugated his soul, and he felt the full
force of the sentiment of a contemporary poet--Verse is everyth