THE SACRED FOUNT
all himself, for it was from my not prompting him that its value would come. "You tell me," I accordingly rather crudely pleaded, "first."
It gave us a moment during which he so looked as if I asked too much, that I had a fear of losing all. He even spoke with some impatience. "If you really haven't found it for yourself, you know. I scarce see what you can have found."
Then I had my inspiration. I risked an approach to roughness, and all the more easily that my words were strict truth. "Oh, don't be afraid—greater things than yours!"
It succeeded, for it played upon his curiosity, and he visibly imagined that, with impatience controlled, he should learn what these things were. He relaxed, he responded, and the next moment I was in all but full enjoyment of the piece wanted to make all my other pieces right—right because of that special beauty in my scheme through which the whole depended so on each part and each part so guaranteed the whole. "What I call the light of day is the sense I've arrived at of her vision."
"Her vision?"—I just balanced in the air.
"Of what they have in common. His—poor chap's—extraordinary situation too."
"Bravo! And you see in that———?"
"What, all these hours, has touched, fascinated, drawn her. It has been an instinct with her."
"Bravissimo!"
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