"Yes--the work for which I live, which is my goal and mainstay and future; which takes the place of father and mother and friends and lover. For which this draught of wine was vintaged, and this hour created, and you yourself, you with your lovely, delicate beauty and your two begging hands, which were really fashioned for giving." "I thought you wanted to speak of your work," said Lilly, softly. "I am speaking of it. I always speak of it. I only want to show you how restlessly it absorbs my experiences. How many, for instance, have sung, painted and sculptured the Annunciation! And how many scholars have grubbed over it! Yet when I see the good, humble, astonished, almost frightened Virgin Mary eyes you are making this very instant, I feel the final word has not been spoken, the supreme conception is still to be formed. You see, that is the way everything must serve my work." "Are you a poet?" asked Lilly, completely taken. He smiled and shook his head. "I'm neither a poet nor a painter, nor a historian, nor a psychologist. Yet I must be something of each, and more to boot. My work requires it." Then he told his story. His father had been instructor at a university and an eminent jurist. His mother had died in giving him birth, and his father did not survive her long. He then came under the care of his uncle, a rich, experienced old bachelor, who had passed a lively life in business and pleasure-seeking, and now dwelt in merry singleness in his castle. He had given Dr. Rennschmidt an education and had assured him a small income which enabled him in a modest fashion to indulge his wishes and whims. Dr. Rennschmidt had intended to follow in his father's footsteps and enter an academic career, but the examinations, which he had passed honourably, had tried his health. So, to satisfy his uncle, he had given up the idea of a university career for the time being, and had gone out into the world. He had been drawn to Italy by his studies in the history of art, which he had always pursued with interest, though without considering them his life work. What fascinated him more than the churches and the museums was the free, beautiful humanity in which the lively southern race expressed its personality. He felt as if it had awakened in him a new, free humanity, conscious of its own powers. He felt more and more strongly the original unity of artistic and personal experience, past and present. The heroes of mythology and history, the characters in poetry and painting, and the poets and painters themselves all became so real and familiar that they seemed to be part of his own being. Surrounded by a people saturated with its own history, possessing the skill of a thousand years' exercise of art, always in touch with the spirit of the time, it seemed possible to him to penetrate into the emotional world of past generations. He learned to distinguish monuments of different periods and follow those related to each other