of civilisation; a name may or may not be attached to each specimen.  Genius is merely the power of assimilation; only the fool imagines he invents.  Owen would go still further.  He maintained that if the circumstances of a man’s life admitted the acquisition of only one set of ideas, his work was thin; but if, on the contrary, circumstances threw him in the way of a new set of ideas, a set of ideas different from the first set, yet sufficiently near for the same brain to assimilate, then the work produced by that brain would be endowed with richer colour; or, in severer form, the idea was, he said, to a work of art what salt is to meat—­it preserved works of art against the corrupting action of time.

How they had talked! how they had discussed things!  They had talked about everything, and she remembered all he said, as she recalled the arguments he had used.  The scene of this last conversation passed and repassed in vanishing gleams—­Bopart on the Rhine.  They had stopped there on their way to Bayreuth, where she was going to sing Elsa.  The maidens and their gold, the fire-surrounding Brunnhilde, the death of the hero, the end of the legends:  these she knew, but of “Parsifal” she knew nothing—­the story or the music.  The time was propitious for him to tell it.  The flame of the candle burnt in the still midnight, and she had listened with bated breath.  She could see Owen leaning forward, telling the story, and she could even see her own listening face as he related how the poor fool rises through sanctification of faith and repudiation of doubt, how he heals the sick king with the sacred spear and becomes himself the high priest of the Grail.  It had seemed to Evelyn that she had been carried beyond the limits of earthly things.  The thrill and shiver of the dead man’s genius haunted the liquid ripple of the river; the moment was ecstatic; the deep, windless night was full of the haunting ripple of the Rhine.  And she remembered how she had clasped her hands ... her very words came back to her....

“It is wonderful ... and we are listening to the Rhine; we shall never forget this midnight.”

At that moment the Sanctus bell rang, and she remembered why she had stayed in church.  She wished to discover what remnant, tatter or shred of her early faith still clung about her.  She wished to put her agnosticism to the test.  She wondered if at the moment of consecration she would be compelled to bow her head.  The bell rang again....  She grew tremulous with expectation.  She strove to refrain, but her head bowed a little, and her thoughts expanded into prayer; she was not sure that she actually prayed, for her thoughts did not divide into explicit words or phrases.  There certainly followed a beautiful softening of her whole being, the bitterness of life extinguished; divine eyes seemed bent upon her, and she was in the midst of mercy, peace and love; and daring no longer to think she did not believe, she sat rapt till Mass was ended.