Narcissus took my remonstrance a little flippantly, I thought, evidently feeling that too much had been made out of very little; for he averred that his ‘attentions’ to Hesper had been of the slightest character, hardly more than occasional looks and whispers, which, from her cold reception of them, he had felt were more distasteful to her than otherwise.  He had indeed, he said, ceased even these the last few days, as her reserve always made him feel foolish, as a man fondling a fair face in his dream wakes on a sudden to find that he is but grimacing at the air.  This reassured me, and I felt little further anxiety.  However, this security only proved how little I really understood the weak side of my friend.  I had not realised how much he really was Narcissus, and how dear to him was a new mirror.  My speaking to him was the one wrong course possible to be taken.  Instead of confirming his growing intention of indifference, it had, as might have been foreseen, the directly opposite effect; and from the moment of his learning that Hesper secretly loved him, she at once became invested with a new glamour, and grew daily more and more the forbidden fascination few can resist.

I did not learn this for many months.  Meanwhile Narcissus chose to deceive me for the first and only time.  At last he told me all; and how different was his manner of telling it from his former gay relations of conquest.  One needed not to hear the words to see he was unveiling a sacred thing, a holiness so white and hidden, the most reverent word seemed a profanation; and, as he laboured for the least soiled wherein to enfold the revelation, his soul seemed as a maid torn with the blushing tremors of a new knowledge.  Men only speak so after great and wonderful travail, and by that token I knew Narcissus loved at last.  It had seemed unlikely ground from which love had first sprung forth, that of a self-worship that could forgo no slightest indulgence—­but thence indeed it had come.  The silent service my words had given him to know that Hesper’s heart was offering to him was not enough; he must hear it articulate, his nostrils craved an actual incense.  To gain this he must deceive two—­his friend, and her whose poor face would kindle with hectic hope, at the false words he must say for the true words he must hear.  It was pitifully mean; but whom has not his own hidden lust made to crawl like a thief, afraid of a shadow, in his own house?  Narcissus’ young lust was himself, and Moloch knew no more ruthless hunger than burns in such.  Of course, it did not present itself quite nakedly to him; he persuaded himself there could be little harm—­he meant none.