“I have learned the great secret,” Darnel added, quietly.
“You have Aladdin’s ring?” said Atkinson. “Or are you in love?”
“Both,” replied Darnel. “It is the same thing.”
Philander flung himself back upon the pillow, with a little laugh. “Go ahead, D.”
“I have found her, and myself. Let me turn down the gas a little; I see it hurts your eyes. I belong in the world now; I am in the heart of it—I said to myself coming down the river this afternoon—in the heart of the world.” He lingered over the words. “Phil,” he exclaimed, suddenly, “all the time I was trying to write I was really trying to lift myself by the boot-straps. I was laboring to imagine things and people, and to get them on paper. It was all wrong. Do you remember that French poem you read me last winter, about the idol and the Eastern princess—how she lay on her couch sleeping—the night was hot—with the bronze idol gazing at her with its porphyry eyes, while her brown bosom rose and sank in her sleep, and the porphyry eyes kept staring at her—staring—but they never saw? Well, I believe my eyes have been like that. In ‘Laki,’ now, you know I wanted to describe the exact color of the stone in the quarry, and asked the Egyptologist up at the Museum to tell me what it was? He laughed at me. Very well. It was a dull-red stone, with bright-red streaks across it; I saw the same thing in Troy this afternoon, when a hod-carrier fell five stories and they picked him up from a pile of bricks.”
“You’re getting rather realistic,” muttered Philander. Darnel was not looking at him, and went on unheeding.
“I have but to tell what I see. I have stopped imagining; my head has ached—Phil, you don’t know how it has ached—trying to imagine things. I am past that now; if you only shut your eyes and look, it is all easy. Take that old Edda story that I tried to work up, about the fellow who fought all day long against his bride’s father, and when night came the bride stole out and raised all the dead men on both sides, by magic, so that the next day, and every day, the battle raged on as before. I used to plan about the magic she used, and tried to invent a charm. Why, all she did was to pass over the battle-field at night, where the dead lay twisted in the frost, and while the wolves snarled around her and the spray from the fiord wet her cheek, she stooped to touch the dead men’s wrists; and they loosed their grip upon broken sword and split linden shield, their breath came again, soft and low like a baby’s, and so they slept till the red dawn.”
“Look here,” said Atkinson, sitting up very straight, “you’ve been reading ‘The Finest Story in the World,’ and it has turned your head.”
“Oh, the London clerk who was conscious of pre-existences, and forgot them all when he fell in love? I could have told Rudyard Kipling better than that myself.” Darnel gave an impatient whirl to the revolving chair.
“You mean you think you can,” replied Atkinson, sharply.