Even whilst they spoke the half-truth that Craft must and should always be beautiful, must aim at perfection of statement, be pleasant, give delight--poor souls--their wan eyes could not wholly put from them that Craft is but the tool of Art; and Art is the expression of all the emotions and sensations--ranges the whole gamut of life, good and bad, ugly and beautiful, tragedy and comedy. Art therefore inspires or it debases; and thus and so stimulates life to fulfil itself--or not to fulfil. Art is good or it is bad--is as powerful for bad as for good--good when it enlarges life; bad when it narrows life. The emotions discover for us far more vasty continents than the eyes of voyagers shall ever behold. Youth awoke. These people about him were Failures--the pallid ghosts of men and women. They were taken up with the shadow. Could this delight in the mere craftsmanship of art be enough? Was this sufficient end? Was it for this the world had been evolved, to this that was set the vast music of the spheres? To this end--to be set down beautifully in man’s handwriting--that the thunders brought the lightnings to the riven oak, that the wondrous mystic seasons took their courses, that the waters leaped hissing to the tornado’s smite, that the angry majesty of the resounding heavens gave place to exultant sunshine and serenest peace! Were these things so, but to be set down in man’s scrap-albums? Was delight in craftsmanship enough to live for? Tush! this was absolute, if subtle, suicide--self-killing of the body and intellect and conscience and will and energy. This sipping at the mere pleasantnesses of life--it was emaciating them in mind, body, will, senses. Their very loves were a dandified make-believe. The kiss of a woman’s mouth was become but a passing pleasure. All these shabby little adulteries were without desire for the child beyond--the child when it came was an unlooked-for inconsequence, a burden, a thing of shame. The sweetest thing in life an affair of accident--to be feared--flinched from! Life might be a tragedy. These were making of it a melancholy and a ghastly farce. Noll got up from his place and slipped from the smoke-befogged room amidst the clamorous din of applause that greeted the recital of an Ode in Envy of One who had died Young. He went out into the night.