Now it is difficult to describe the time I spent in the land of delight, because it was all so unlike the life of the world, and yet was so strangely like it. There was work going on there, I found, but the nature of it I could not discern, because that was kept hidden from me. Men and women excused themselves from our company, saying they must return to their work; but most of the time was spent in leisurely converse about things which I confess from the first did not interest me. There was much wit and laughter, and there were constant games and assemblies and amusements. There were feasts of delicious things, music, dramas. There were books read and discussed; it was just like a very cultivated and civilised society. But what struck me about the people there was that it was all very restless and highly-strung, a perpetual tasting of pleasures, which somehow never pleased. There were two people there who interested me most. One was a very handsome and courteous man, who seemed to desire my company, and spoke more freely than the rest; the other a young man, who was very much occupied with the girl, my companion, and made a great friendship with her. The elder of the two, for I must give them names, shall be called Charmides, which seems to correspond with his stately charm, and the younger may be known as Lucius. I sat one day with Charmides, listening to a great concert of stringed and wind instruments, in a portico which gave on a large sheltered garden. He was much absorbed in the music, which was now of a brisk and measured beauty, and now of a sweet seriousness which had a very luxurious effect upon my mind. "It is wonderful to me," said Charmides, as the last movement drew to a close of liquid melody, "that these sounds should pass into the heart like wine, heightening and uplifting the thought--there is nothing so beautiful as the discrimination of mood with which it affects one, weighing one delicate phrase against another, and finding all so perfect." "Yes," I said, "I can understand that; but I must confess that there seems to me something wanting in the melodies of this place. The music which I loved in the old days was the music which spoke to the soul of something further yet and unattainable; but here the music seems to have attained its end, and to have fulfilled its own desire." "Yes," said Charmides, "I know that you feel that; your mind is very clear to me, up to a certain point; and I have sometimes wondered why you spend your time here, because you are not one of us, as your friend Cynthia is." I glanced, as he spoke, to where Cynthia sat on a great carved settle among cushions, side by side with Lucius, whispering to him with a smile. "No," I said, "I do not think I have found my place yet, but I am here, I think, for a purpose, and I do not know what that purpose is."