He saw nothing in this universe but his vision; he did not see the earth beneath him, nor the people round him. Is that not enough to explain everything, almost to justify anything? Doesn’t it explain his failure, for example? The fact that the world ignored him, that his followers dropped away from him, that nobody read his books? For, since he was never convinced of the world, how could he convince the world? Since he had no “realising sense” of men, how could he hold men? Since, in writing his books, he took no account of human nature, no account of human taste, endurance—since he wrote his books, as he spoke his speeches, not to you or me, not to flesh and blood, but to the walls and ceiling, to space, to the unpeopled air—how was it possible that he should have human readers? It explains his failure, the failure of a long life of unremitting labour. He was learned, he was in earnest, he was indefatigable; and the net product of his learning, his earnestness, his industry, was nil, because there can be no reciprocity established between something and nothing. It explains his failure; and it explains—it almost excuses—in a sense it even almost justifies—the queerest of his actions. Other people did not exist for him; therefore other people had no feelings to be considered, no rights, no possessions, to be respected. They did not exist, therefore they were in no way to be reckoned with. Their observation was not to be avoided, their power was not to be feared. They could not do anything; they could not see what he did. The queerest of his actions? You will suppose that I must have some very queer action still to record. Well, there was his action the other night at the Casino, for one thing; I haven’t yet done with that. But the queerest of all his actions, I think, was his treatment of Israela, his step-daughter Israela.... During the visit Mr. Ambrose paid us in Paris, when I was nineteen, he, whose early disciples had dropped away, made a new disciple: a Madame Fontanas, a Mexican woman—of Jewish extraction, I imagine—a widow, with a good deal of money. Israela, her daughter, was a fragile, pale-faced, dark-haired, great-eyed little girl, of twelve or thirteen. Madame Fontanas sat at Mr. Ambrose’s feet, and listened, and believed. Perhaps she conceived an affection for him; perhaps she only thought that here was a great philosopher, a great philanthropist, and that he ought to have some one to take permanent care of him, and reduce the material friction of his path to a minimum. Anyhow, when the spring came, she married him. I have no definite information on the subject, but I am sure in my own mind that it was she who took the initiative—that she offered, and he vaguely accepted, her hand. Anyhow, in the spring she married him, and carried him off to her Mexican estates.