“I get all that I give you, John, and more, too.  Shut up and mind your business.”

“What do you get from me?” demanded the literal one, astonished.

“All that you are, Johnny; which is much that I am not—­but ought to be—­may yet be.”

“That’s some sort of transcendental philosophy, isn’t it?” grumbled the sculptor.

“You ought to know better than I, John.  The sacred codfish never penetrated to the Hudson. Inde irac!”

Yes, truly, whatever it was that had crept into his veins had imperceptibly suffused him, enveloped him—­and was working changes.  He had a vague idea, sometimes, that Valerie had been the inception, the source, the reagent in the chemistry which was surely altering either himself or the world of men around him; that the change was less a synthesis than a catalysis—­that he was gradually becoming different because of her nearness to him—­her physical and spiritual nearness.

He had plenty of leisure to think of her while she was away; but thought of her was now only an active ebullition of the ceaseless consciousness of her which so entirely possessed him.  When a selfish man loves—­if he really loves—­his disintegration begins.

Waking, sleeping, in happiness, in perplexity, abroad, at home, active or at rest, inspired or weary, alone or with others, an exquisite sense of her presence on earth invaded him, subtly refreshing him with every breath he drew.  He walked abroad amid the city crowds companioned by her always; at rest the essence of her stole through and through him till the very air around seemed sweetened.

He heard others mention her, and remained silent, aloof, wrapped in his memories, like one who listens to phantoms in a dream praising perfection.

Lying back in his chair before his canvas, he thought of her often—­of odd little details concerning their daily life—­details almost trivial—­gestures, a glance, a laugh—­recollections which surprised him with the very charm of their insignificance.

He remembered that he had never known her to be ungenerous—­had never detected in her a wilfully selfish motive.  In his life he had never before believed in a character so utterly unshackled by thought of self.

He remembered that he had never known her to fail in sympathy for any living thing; had never detected in her an indifference to either the happiness or the sorrow of others.  In his life he had never before believed that the command to love one’s neighbour had in it anything more significant than the beauty of an immortal theory.  He believed it now because, in her, he had seen it in effortless practice.  He was even beginning to understand how it might be possible for him to follow where she led—­as she, unconsciously, was a follower of a precept given to lead the world through eternities.

Leaning on the closed piano, thinking of her in the still, sunny afternoons, faintly in his ears her voice seemed to sound; and he remembered her choice of ballads:—­