Alvary's _Siegfried_ was the very embodiment of splendid, golden, joyous youth. Balmung beaten into shape, he sprang from the forge, whirling it and laughing at its glitter as an ecstatic child might. The splitting of the anvil was the mere sudden caprice of youthful bravado and mischief. He looked about for an instant to find something on which to test his new toy, and struck the iron in half as a boy would snip off the head of a daisy with his new whip. All his movements had the unpremeditatedness of youth. Drunk with the struggle and the triumph of his contest with the dragon, he killed _Mime_ more to sate this new lust of power than to mete out justice or due punishment. He threw himself, sweating with exertion, and swelling with a new realization of his manhood, upon the grasses by the stream, and as the breezes cooled his body and spirit, and the soft peace of the green world stole upon him, romance woke in his face and voice: the rough uncouthness of boyhood fell away like a discarded garment. Who that once saw and heard it can ever forget those fresh tones or that slim-waisted boy wandering away into the sunlit forest, his beautiful dreaming face lifted yearningly to the thrilling bird voice that sang of love?... Youth seeking passion--the sleeping woman ringed with fire. Ah me!--all our hearts ached after him; after our own splendid moment. It is useless to say that this is not absolute beauty. It is impossible that a heavy-footed tenor (whose belt would have served for a saddle girth) with a square Sclav head and pendulous cheeks can be equalized to the other by individual taste. Such taste is simply bad. January 6. A Door Ajar. I have been reading Pater's "Greek Studies"; a volume which an amiable friend presented to me as a Christmas gift. It affects me physically as well as mentally. I must lay the book down now and then, because I find my heart beats and my temples grow moist. It is as if its covers were doors opening into the other world--that world that is always just beyond one. I don't know whether it is a common experience, but from my earliest childhood I have always had a sort of belief that if one stooped very low, held one's breath, and made a bold spring, one would break through and under the barrier, and be _There_! Or one might go very suddenly around a corner and be _There_. Always there was the sensation that it was lying just beyond, just outside of one's self, and that only a certain heaviness of the flesh, a certain lack of concentration of attention, prevented one's participation in it. Twice the door almost opened. I sprang in spirit to cross the threshold, and there was--nothing. The door was slammed in my face, but I never forgot that I had nearly got through. It was like death. As if one's brain and heart had suddenly grown vast and vapourized. Pater's book rouses some echo of those sensations.