“—For your intelligence appears to me a very terrible sort of intelligence,” Guivric continued, “and I have no doubt that your magic is upon a plane with it. My little thaumaturgies could have no chance whatever against such magic and such intelligence. Oh, dear me, no! So I concede my helplessness, Messire Glaum, without mounting the high and skittish horse of virtuous indignation. I avoid the spectacle of an unseemly wrangle between fellow artists: and, in asking you to restore to me the customary rewards of a thrifty and virtuous and in every way prosperous existence, I can but appeal to your mercy.”
“I,” said the Sylan, “have none.”
“So I had hoped”—here Guivric coughed. “Anguish, sheer anguish, sir, deprives me of proper control of my tongue. For I had of course meant to say,” Guivric continued, upon a more tragic note,—“so I had hoped in vain! Now every hope is gone. Henceforward you are human, and I am only an unhonored vague Sylan! Well, it is all very terrible; but nothing can be done about it, I suppose.”
“Nothing whatever can be done about it,—unless you prefer to court something worse with those thaumaturgies of yours?”
Guivric was pained. “But, between fellow artists!” he stated. “Oh, no, dear Glaum, that sort of open ostentatious rivalry, for merely material gains, seems always rather regrettably vulgar.”
“Why, then, if you will pardon me,” the Sylan submitted, in Guivric’s most civil manner when dealing with unimportant persons, “I shall ask to be excused from prolonging our highly enjoyable chat. Some other time, perhaps— But I really am quite busy this morning: and, besides, our wife will be coming in here any minute, to call me to dinner.”
“I shall not intrude.” Vaporously arising, Guivric now smiled, with a new flavor of sympathy. “A rather terrible woman, that, you will find! And, Lord, how a young Guivric did adore her once! Nowadays she is one of the innumerous reasons which lead me to question if you have been quite happily inspired, even with the delights of heaven impendent. You see, she is certainly going to heaven. And Michael too,—do you know, I think you will find Michael, also, something of a bore? He expects so much of his father, and when those expectations seem imperiled he does look at you so exactly like a hurt, high-minded cow! Now it is you who will have to live up to his notions, and to the notions of that fond, fretful, foolish woman, and it is you who will be bothered with an ever-present sense of something lost and betrayed—! But you will live up to their idiotic notions, none the less! And I do not doubt that, just as you say, the oppression and the chastening will be good for you.”
The Sylan answered, sternly, “Poor shallow learned selfish fool! it is that love and pride, it is their faith and their jealousy to hide away your shortcomings, it is the things you feebly jeer at, which will create in me a soul!”
“No doubt—” Then Guivric went on hastily, and in a tone of cordial encouragement. “Oh, yes, my dear fellow, there is not a doubt of it! and I am sure you will find the birth-pangs well rewarded. Heaven, everybody tells me, is a most charming place. Meanwhile, if you do not mind, just for a minute, pray do not contort my face so unbecomingly until after I am quite gone! To see what right-thinking and a respectably inflated impatience with frivolity can make of my face, and has so often made of my face,” reflected Guivric, as he luxuriously drifted out of the familiar window like a smoke, “is even now a little humiliating. But, then, the most salutary lessons are invariably the most shocking.”