Rickman shook his head. "No; that's not the trouble. It's the other way about. Life's infinite and art's one. And at first, you know, it's the infinity that staggers you." He flung himself into a chair opposite Jewdwine, planted his elbows on the table, and propped his chin on his hands. He looked as if he saw the infinity he spoke of. "I can't describe to you," he said, "what it is merely to be alive out there in the streets, on a sunny day, when the air's all fine watery gold, and goes dancing and singing into your head like dry champagne. I've given up alcohol. It isn't really necessary. I got as drunk as a lord the other day going over Hampstead Heath in a west wind" (he _looked_ drunk at the mere thought of it). "Does it ever affect _you_ in that way?" Jewdwine smiled. The wind on Hampstead Heath had never affected him in that way. "No. It isn't what you think. I used to go mad about women, just as I used to drink. I don't seem to care a rap about them now." But his eyes had a peculiar large and brilliant look, as if he saw the woman of his desire approaching him. His voice softened. "Don't you know when the world--all the divine maddening beauty of it--lies naked before your eyes, and you want to get hold of it--now--this minute, and instead it gets hold of you, and pulls you every way at once--don't you know? The thing's got a thousand faces, and two thousand arms, and ten thousand devils in it." Jewdwine didn't know. How should he? He had a horror of this forcing of the sensuous and passionate note. The author of the _Prolegomena to Æsthetics_ recoiled from "too much temperament." He felt, moreover, the jealous pang of the master who realizes that he has lost his hold. This was not that Rickman who used to hang all flushed and fervid on Jewdwine's words. He remembered how once on an April day, a year ago, the disciple had turned at the call of woman and of the world, the call of the Spring in his heart and in his urgent blood. And yet this was not that Rickman either. "My dear Rickman, I don't understand. Are you talking about the world? Or the flesh? Or the devils?" "All of them, if you like. And you can throw in the sun and the moon and the stars, too. There are moments, Jewdwine, when I understand God. At any rate I know how he felt the very day before creation. His world's all raw chaos to me, and I've got to make my world out of it." "I'm afraid I cannot help you _there_." As they parted he felt that perhaps he had failed to be sufficiently sympathetic. "I'll do my best," said he, "to set you right with the public." Left alone, he stood staring earnestly at the chair where Rickman had sat propping his chin in his hands. He seemed to be contemplating his phantom; the phantom that had begun to haunt him. What had he let himself in for? CHAPTER XLIII