“Just so,” he said, “I live. I had never lived before.” Most of all, I think, I was perplexed at the sight of his violin. From what I had seen of his youthful life, I could have imagined him spending all day and all night with that; but here it hung, useless as a stick of wood. “You could have made strings for it,” I said. “I can make them for you.” “But they would be of no use to me,” he answered. “And all your music—you have given it up?” “The music I have to do with,” he said, “has long ceased to be music that anyone could play.” “But, Daniel!” I protested. “Listen to me,” he said. “Have you never read that Beethoven never heard some of his greatest symphonies? Do you not understand how a musician can comprehend music from a score? And from that, how he can create it in his own mind and enjoy it, without ever writing it down or hearing it?” “Then,” I said, almost speechless with wonder; “then you compose music in your mind?” “No,” he said. “I _live_ music in my soul.” These things were on the day of my rescue, after I had recovered from my exhaustion. The words which he spoke I no more comprehended than if I had been a child; but the strangeness of the thing haunted my soul, and my questioning and arguing never ceased. All of this he bore with a gentle patience. I had my youthful recollections of Robinson Crusoe; and as a man of science, I could naturally not spend two minutes conversing with Daniel and examining his affairs without thinking some new device by which he could have made his lot more tolerable. I could as yet hardly realise that it was to be my own fate to live upon the deserted island for ever; all my thoughts were of what I should have done had I been in his place. He had no weapons, no traps, no gardens, no house—and so on. “But, Edward,” he would say again and again, “do you not understand? Once more—I have no _time_ for such things.” “Time! _Time!_” I would cry. “But what _else_ have you? What have you to _do?_” “I have my life to live,” was the invariable response; “I have no time for anything else.” We were sitting that afternoon beneath the shade of a great forest-tree before the cavern. Suddenly, seeing again the dazed look upon my face, he put his arm about me. “Listen to me, dear brother,” he said, smiling. “You remember Diogenes, who lived in a tub? That was in order that he might have to call no man master, and no thing—least of all his own body. And can you not see that a man’s own soul is his soul just the same, whether he be on a desert island or in the midst of a city of millions? And that mind, emotion, will—he has the life of his soul to live?” I sat surprised into silence; then suddenly I felt Daniel’s arm tighten about me. “Ah, my dear brother,” he said, his voice lowering, “it will be so hard! Do you think I have not realised it—how hard, _hard_ it will be?” “What will be hard?” I asked.