For as Horvendile he lived among such gallant circumstances as he had always vaguely hoped his real life might provide to-morrow. This Horvendile, coming unintelligibly to Storisende, and witnessing there the long combat between Sir Guiron des Rocques and Maugis d’Aigremont for possession of La Beale Alison—as Kennaston’s heroine is called of course in the printed book—seems to us in reading the tale no very striking figure; as in _Rob Roy_ and _Esmond_, it is not to the narrator, but to the people and events he tells of, that attention is riveted. But Felix Kennaston, writing the book, lived the life of Horvendile in the long happy hours of writing, which became longer and longer; and insensibly his existence blended and was absorbed into the more colorful life of Horvendile. It was as Horvendile he wrote, seeming actually at times to remember what he recorded, rather than to invent.... And he called it inspiration.... So the tale flowed on, telling how Count Emmerick planned a notable marriage-feast for his sister La Beale Ettarre and Sir Guiron des Rocques, with vastly different results from those already recorded—with the results, in fine, which figure in the printed _Men Who Loved Alison_, where Horvendile keeps his proper place as a more or less convenient device for getting the tale told. But to Kennaston that first irrational winding-up of affairs, wherein a world’s creator was able to wring only contempt and pity from his puppets—since he had not endowed them with any faculties wherewith to comprehend their creator’s nature and intent—was always the tale’s real ending.... * * * * * So it was that the lonely man lived with his dreams, and toiled for the vision’s sake contentedly; and we of Lichfield who were most familiar with Felix Kennaston in the flesh knew nothing then of his mental diversions; and, with knowledge, would probably have liked him not a bit the better. For ordinary human beings, as all other normal forms of life, turn naturally toward the sun, and are at their best thereunder; but it is the misfortune of dreamers that their peculiar talents find no exercise in daylight. So we regarded Kennaston with the distrust universally accorded people who need to be meddling with ideas in a world which sustains its mental credit comfortably enough with a current coinage of phrases.