It was the story of Hathawi, the dreamer, which he had come upon in a Hindoo legend. “The Hearer of Truth,” was to be the title of the book; and for it Thyrsis was working out a new style. In the original it had been a fanciful tale; but he meant to take it over to the world of everyday reality, to give it the atmosphere of utter verihood. He meant to use a style of biblical simplicity, bare of all ornament, dealing with the most elemental things. And this might seem easy, but in reality it was the hardest thing in the world--it was like blank verse. One might toil all day for a single phrase into which to pack one’s meaning. He wished to show Hathawi from the beginning; the solitary child, the seer of life’s mystery, who went away into a lonely place to brood. He dwelt in the high mountains, where the lightning played and the storm-winds shook him; he disciplined his will by fasting and prayer, so that the self in him died, and he could perceive eternal things, and aspects of being that are hidden. He went into the forests and dwelt with the wild things, and learned to understand their language--not only their beauty and their power, which are plain; not only their fears and their hatreds, which are painful to discover; but also their love, which is deepest of all. He learned to know the life which is in lifeless things--in water and air and fire; the joys and sorrows of the flowers, and the venerable wisdom of great trees, and the worship which is in the floods of sunlight. And having learned these things, Hathawi came back into the world. He found that he was able to read the souls of men, but at first he could not believe what he read--it was so terrible, and so far from nature. He preferred to stay among the poor, because they were closer to the heart of things, and their falsehoods were simple. But he discovered that the evil and misery of men’s life came from above, and so he went into the “great world” to dwell. And everywhere he went, men’s innermost thoughts were revealed to him, and to themselves through him. He acted upon men and women like wine--an impulse seized them to speak the truth, the truth that they had hidden even from their own hearts. Afterwards, when they realized what they had done, they hated Hathawi and feared him; but they said nothing, because each thought that the secret was his own.