or to the Capitoline and there let my imagination wander in re-creation of the visions of life and the soul that came as interpretations to the ancients.  I have lately been reading a book on the cult of Orpheus, the Pagan Christ, one of the loveliest figures of the Greeks.  It made me believe somehow that Christ never lived, that he is only a creation of the anonymous imagination of a hungering world.  For surely Orpheus did not live, and how closely he resembles Christ as an embodiment of the heart’s aspiration to free itself from the material and to rise into a realm of pure beauty, understanding, devotion—­all lovely things.  My friend, I was thinking of you all the while.  And if you could have been a friend of Pinturicchio in the noblest sense, why not of me?  I am not trying to play with words or with ideas, or to perplex you, or to excite your doubts or your desires.  I think you have never had a friend.  What, after all, could you find in a soul so masculine, so lacking in intuition as Douglas; upon whom you have poured your admiration for all these years?  Has it not been for lack of some one better to whom you could give your heart?  That is why I wish that you and I could find an enduring and inspiring union in a mutual interest in great things.  Forgive me, I grieve that all this seems a cruel waste to me—­all these years of your life.”

“Is your life not a waste?” I asked before I could check the words.

“No,” Isabel replied calmly, in no way offended.  “After all there is a feeling in my heart for Uncle Tom such as you might have felt for Pinturicchio.  What does one derive from love?  There are riches in admiration, gratitude, sympathy, filial tenderness, in desire for devotion; yes, even in pity; in the bestowal of comforting hands; in solace given in hours of fatigue and illness; in care for declining vitality.  All these expressions I have.  And now, my friend, I would be a help to you.  I would give you eyes to understand your past; and a vision to choose a better future.  If you have ever been Dionysius, which you have not, you are yet an unawakened soul.  I would have you become Orpheus, attended by the Muses of all this loveliness with which we are surrounded here.  By contrast it makes me think of America, so vast but so without a soul.  By soul I do not mean that energy which enforces righteousness, the dream of the fanatic, the ideal of the law fabricator; but the soul of high freedoms, delights, nobilities.  For there is just as much difference between those things as there is between Douglas and Pinturicchio.  All of this goes without saying, of course; but I am thinking of the application of these things to you.  I am your friend, you know.”

Was there reality in Isabel’s words?  Was she not sublimating the materials of our thwarted relationship?  Turning to Douglas I tried to tell her what character of thinker he was and how, in spite of any deficiency that he had, he was a brave heart and a thinking mind and a needed builder in America.