I could not doubt that the music
was there, while I knew that for some dulness or belatedness I was
myself shut out; not, indeed, that I doubted of the truth of what
was said, but I was in the position of the old saint who said that
he believed, and prayed to One to help his unbelief. For I saw that
though I projected the lines of my own experience infinitely,
adding loyalty to loyalty, and admiration to admiration, it was all
on a different plane. This interfusion of personality, this vital
union of soul, I could not doubt it! but it made me feel my own
essential isolation still more deeply, as when the streaming
sunlight strikes warmth and glow out of the fire, revealing
crumbling ashes where a moment before had been a heart of flame.
"Ah te meae si partem animae rapit
Maturior vis, quid moror altera?"--
"Ah, if the violence of fate snatch thee from me, thou half of my
soul, how can I, the other half, still linger here?" So wrote the
old cynical, worldly, Latin poet of his friend--that poet whom, for
all his deftness and grace, we are apt to accuse of a certain
mundane heartlessness, though once or twice there flickers up a
sharp flame from the comfortable warmth of the pile.
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