Alwyn sighed. "Nay, well, for us both,--for I should have chafed at her loving restraint, and she would unquestionably have been disappointed in me. My father was a conscientious, methodical business man, who spent all his days up to almost the last moment of his life in amassing money, though it never gave him any joy so far as I could see, and when at his death I became sole possessor of his hardly-earned fortune, I felt far more sorrow than satisfaction. I wished he had spent his gold on himself and left me poor, for it seemed to me I had need of nothing save the little I earned by my pen--I was content to live an anchorite and dine off a crust for the sake of the divine Muse I worshipped. Fate, however, willed it otherwise,--and though I scarcely cared for the wealth I inherited, it gave me at least one blessing--that of perfect independence. I was free to follow my own chosen vocation, and for a brief wondering while I deemed myself happy, ... happy as Keats must have been when the fragment of 'Hyperion' broke from his frail life as thunder breaks from a summer-cloud. I was as a monarch swaying a sceptre that commanded both earth and heaven; a kingdom was mine-a kingdom of golden ether, peopled with shining shapes Protean,--alas! its gates are shut upon me now, and I shall enter it no more!" "'No more' is a long time, my friend!" interposed Heliobas gently. "You are too despondent,--perchance too diffident, concerning your own ability." "Ability!" and he laughed wearily. "I have none,--I am as weak and inapt as an untaught child--the music of my heart is silenced! Yet there is nothing I would not do to regain the ravishment of the past--when the sight of the sunset across the hills, or the moon's silver transfiguration of the sea filled me with deep and indescribable ecstasy--when the thought of Love, like a full chord struck from a magic harp, set my pulses throbbing with delirious delight--fancies thick as leaves in summer crowded my brain--Earth was a round charm hung on the breast of a smiling Divinity--men were gods--women were angels'--the world seemed but a wide scroll for the signatures of poets, and mine, I swore, should be clearly written!" He paused, as though ashamed of his own fervor, and glanced at Heliobas, who, leaning a little forward in his chair was regaling him with friendly, attentive interest; then he continued more calmly: