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Then twelve o’clock was heralded by the College bell, and Pauline arose as though this equable deep-throated interruption of the music’s levity had been a signal. John Charteris saw her clearly now; and she was beautiful.

“I must go. You will not ever quite forget me, Jack. Such is my sorry comfort.” It seemed to Charteris that she smiled as in mockery, and yet it was a very tender sort of derision. “Yes, you have made your books. You have done what you most desired to do. You have got all from life that you have asked of life. Oh, yes, you have got much from life. One prize, though, Jack, you missed.”

He, too, had risen, quiet and perfectly sure of himself. “I haven’t missed it. For you love me.”

This widened her eyes. “Did I not always love you, Jack? Yes, even when you went away forever, and there were no letters, and the days were long. Yes, even knowing you, I loved you, John Charteris.”

“Oh, I was wrong, all wrong,” he cried; “and yet there is something to be said upon the other side, as always. . . .” Now Charteris was still for a while. The little man’s chin was uplifted so that it was toward the stars he looked rather than at Pauline Romeyne, and when he spoke he seemed to meditate aloud. “I was born, I think, with the desire to make beautiful books–brave books that would preserve the glories of the Dream untarnished, and would re-create them for battered people, and re-awaken joy and magnanimity.” Here he laughed, a little ruefully. “No, I do not think I can explain this obsession to any one who has never suffered from it. But I have never in my life permitted anything to stand in the way of my fulfilling this desire to serve the Dream by re-creating it for others with picked words, and that has cost me something. Yes, the Dream is an exacting master. My books, such as they are, have been made what they are at the dear price of never permitting myself to care seriously for anything else. I might not dare to dissipate my energies by taking any part in the drama I was attempting to re-write, because I must so jealously conserve all the force that was in me for the perfection of my lovelier version. That may not be the best way of making books, but it is the only one that was possible for me. I had so little natural talent, you see,” said Charteris, wistfully, “and I was anxious to do so much with it. So I had always to be careful. It has been rather lonely, my dear. Now, looking back, it seems to me that the part I have played in all other people’s lives has been the role of a tourist who enters a cafe chantant, a fortress, or a cathedral, with much the same forlorn sense of detachment, and observes what there is to see that may be worth remembering, and takes a note or two, perhaps, and then leaves the place forever. Yes, that is how I served the Dream and that is how I got my books. They are very beautiful books, I think, but they cost me fifteen years of human living and human intimacy, and they are hardly worth so much.”

He turned to her, and his voice changed. “Oh, I was wrong, all wrong, and chance is kindlier than I deserve. For I have wandered after unprofitable gods, like a man blundering through a day of mist and fog, and I win home now in its golden sunset. I have laughed very much, my dear, but I was never happy until to-night. The Dream, as I now know, is not best served by making parodies of it, and it does not greatly matter after all whether a book be an epic or a directory. What really matters is that there is so much faith and love and kindliness which we can share with and provoke in others, and that by cleanly, simple, generous living we approach perfection in the highest and most lovely of all arts. . . . But you, I think, have always comprehended this. My dear, if I were worthy to kneel and kiss the dust you tread in I would do it. As it happens, I am not worthy. Pauline, there was a time when you and I were young together, when we aspired, when life passed as if it were to the measures of a noble music–a heart-wringing, an obdurate, an intolerable music, it might be, but always a lofty music. One strutted, no doubt–it was because one knew oneself to be indomitable. Eh, it is true I have won all I asked of life, very horribly true. All that I asked, poor fool! oh, I am weary of loneliness, and I know now that all the phantoms I have raised are only colorless shadows which belie the Dream, and they are hateful to me. I want just to recapture that old time we know of, and we two alone. I want to know the Dream again, Pauline,–the Dream which I had lost, had half forgotten, and have so pitifully parodied. I want to know the Dream again, Pauline, and you alone can help me.”