“When we have escaped from the region of mediocrity we revel in a purer atmosphere, where we may join hands with the elect and dance a round,” said Marie Bashkirtseff, one of the youngest, bravest and brightest of the elect.
The mediocre mass is an aggregation of self-enslaved minds, against whose self-satisfied stupidity the gods themselves are powerless.
CHAPTER XX.
PEOPLE OF THE PAST.
“Here sits he, shaping wings to fly:
His heart forebodes a mystery;
He names the name eternity.”—Tennyson.
“What birth is, that also is death; it is the same line drawn in two directions.”—Schopenhauer.
One evening at the house of a famous orator Mrs. Doring saw a face with which she had been familiar since childhood, yet never before had she seen it outside of the enchanted realm of imagination.
It was a woman’s face, strong, noble, beautiful, and the eyes, the brown eyes of it, had in them a compassion that embraced the whole human race.
Cartice looked upon it with an all-compelling fascination, for it was the face of one of her own people—the very dearest one—the Helen of her young dreams, to whom she used to tell her hopes and yearnings, and who always understood, and gave sympathy and cheer.
How often had she pictured that face on paper, trying to make objective what she saw clearly with her subjective sight, but how impossible it had ever been to give the eyes the direct, comprehensive, compassionate glow that distinguished them,—the light of the soul itself, which went straight to other souls!
She would not ask the name lest it prove to be one below her ideal. She hardly dared look away lest the precious vision vanish, while her eyes were turned aside. No; it were better to hold the glad fancy as long as possible. “Do you know Helen Gardener?” asked a voice at her side.