“You saw in the rushlight a woman against the arras; there was a humming of viola d'amore from the musicians' balcony; she smiled at you, lingering, and then vanished with a whisper of brocade de Lyons on a sanded floor. Nothing else but a soft white glove, eternally fragrant, in your habergeon, an eternally fragrant memory; the dim vision in stone street and coppice; a word, a message, it might be, sent across the world of steel at death. And then, in the last flicker of vision, the arras and the clear insistent strings, the whispering brocade de Lyons on the landing. “The philosophy of it,” he said in a different tone, “is exact, even a scientific truth. But men have been more concerned with turning lead into gold; naturally the spirit has been neglected. The science of love has been incredibly soiled: “The old gesture toward the stars, the bridge of perfection, the escape from the fatality of flesh. Yet it was a service of the body made incredibly lovely in actuality and still never to be grasped. Never to be won. It ought to be clear to you that realized it would diminish into quite a different thing-- “'_La figlia della sua mente, l'amorosa idea._'” His voice grew so faint that Linda could scarcely distinguish articulate sounds. All that he said, without meaning for her, stirred her heart. She was used to elder enigmas of speech; her normal response was instinctively emotional, and nothing detracted from the gravity of her attention. “Not in pious men,” he continued, more uncertain; “nor in seminaries of virtue. They have their reward. But in men whose bitterness of longing grew out of hideous fault. The distinction of beauty--not a payment for prayers or chastity. The distinction of love ... above chests of linen and a banker's talent and patents of nobility.... Divine need. Idiotic. But what else, what better, offers?” He was, she saw, terribly sick. His hands were clenched and his entire being strained and rigid, as though he were trying to do something tremendously difficult. At last, with infinite pain, he succeeded. “I must get away,” he articulated. Linda was surprised at the effort necessary for this slight accomplishment when he had said the most bewildering things with complete ease. Well, the elevators were right in front of him. He rose slowly, and, with Linda standing at his side, dug a sharp hand into her shoulder. It hurt, but instinctively she bore it and, moving forward, partly supported him. She pressed the bell that signaled for the elevator and it almost immediately sank into view. “Hurry,” he said harshly to the colored operator in a green uniform; and quite suddenly, leaving a sense of profound mystery, he disappeared. III