Meanwhile, Kennaston read of Endymion and Numa, of Iason and Anchises, of Tannhäuser, and Foulques Plantagenet, and Raymondin de la Forêt, and Olger Danske, and other mortal men to whom old legend-weavers, as if wistfully, accredited the love of immortal mistresses—and of less fortunate nympholepts, frail babbling planet-stricken folk, who had spied by accident upon an inhuman loveliness, and so, must pine away consumed by foiled desire of a beauty which the homes and cities and the tilled places of men did not afford, and life did not bring forth sufficingly. He read Talmudic tales of Sulieman-ben-Daoud—even in name transfigured out of any resemblance to an amasser of reliable axioms—that proud luxurious despot “who went daily to the comeliest of the spirits for wisdom”; and of Arthur and the Lady Nimuë; and of Thomas of Ercildoune, whom the Queen of Faëry drew from the merchants’ market-place with ambiguous kindnesses; and of John Faustus, who “through fantasies and deep cogitations” was enabled to woo successfully a woman that died long before his birth, and so won to his love, as the book recorded, “this stately pearl of Greece, fair Helena, the wife to King Menelaus.” And, as has been said, the old idea of muses who actually prompted artistic composition, with audible voices, took on another aspect. He came to suspect that other creative writers had shared such a divided life as his was now, for of this he seemed to find traces here and there. Coleridge offered at once an arresting parallel. Yes, Kennaston reflected; and Coleridge had no doubt spoken out in the first glow of wonder, astounded into a sort of treason, when he revealed how he wrote _Kubla Khan_; so that thus perhaps Coleridge had told far more concerning the origin of this particular poem than he ever did as to his later compositions. Then, also, I have a volume of Herrick from Kennaston’s library with curious comments penciled therein, relative to _Lovers How They Come and Part_ and _His Mistress Calling Him to Elysium_; a copy of Marlowe’s _Tragical History of Doctor Faustus_ is similarly annotated; and on a fly-leaf in Forster’s _Life of Charles Dickens_, apropos of passages in the first chapter of the ninth book, Kennaston has inscribed strange speculations very ill suited to general reading. All that Kennaston cared to print, however, concerning the hypothesis he eventually evolved, you will find in _The Tinctured Veil_, where he has nicely refrained from too-explicit writing, and—of course—does not anywhere pointblank refer to his personal experiences. Then Kennaston ran afoul of the Rosicrucians, and their quaint dogmas, which appeared so preposterous at first, took on vital meanings presently; and here too he seemed to surprise the cautious whispering of men who neither cared nor dared to speak with candor of all they knew. It seemed to him he understood that whispering which was everywhere apparent in human history; for he too was initiate.