CHAPTER VI
THE LUST OF RENUNCIATION
O purblind race of miserable men,
How many among us at this very hour
Do forge a life-long trouble for ourselves
By taking true for false or false for true!
—Tennyson (Geraint and Enid).
Ellinor went straight from the dining-room to seek her father in his peaceful retreat. Courage failed her to face the company any longer that night; she had, moreover, a longing to be with one who at least would not misunderstand her.
But, on the very threshold, her heart sank. It hardly needed Barnaby’s warning clutch at her gown from where he sat like a statue of watchfulness, just inside the door, his shake of the head and mysterious finger on lip to show her that her coming was inopportune. The very atmosphere of the room forbade interruption. The air seemed full of floating thoughts, of whispering voices and stealthy vapours; of these singular aromas that to her were like the letters of a strange language which she had hardly yet learned to spell. Up to the vaulted roof the whole space was humming with mysterious activity; a thousand energies were in being around some secret work. And there, master-brain and centre power, her father, seated at his table, like a mimic creator evolving a world of his own out of the forces of his chaos!
She came forward a step or two. His underlip was moving rapidly; and broken, unintelligible words dropped from time to time among the whispering vapour-voices all about him, like stones into a singing fountain. Now he lifted his blue eyes, stared straight at her—and saw her not!
Once or twice before she had known him in this state of mental isolation; she was aware that his brain was wound up to an extraordinary pitch, and that to interfere with its operations or endeavour now to bring its thoughts into another current would be at once useless to herself and cruel to him.