Darcy pushed back his chair and sat sideways to the table looking at the other.

“Has that been your occupation then?” he asked.

“Yes, that anyhow is one aspect of it.  Think what youth means!  It is the capacity for growth, mind, body, spirit, all grow, all get stronger, all have a fuller, firmer life every day.  That is something, considering that every day that passes after the ordinary man reaches the full-blown flower of his strength, weakens his hold on life.  A man reaches his prime, and remains, we say, in his prime, for ten years, or perhaps twenty.  But after his primest prime is reached, he slowly, insensibly weakens.  These are the signs of age in you, in your body, in your art probably, in your mind.  You are less electric than you were.  But I, when I reach my prime—­I am nearing it—­ah, you shall see.”

The stars had begun to appear in the blue velvet of the sky, and to the east the horizon seen above the black silhouette of the village was growing dove-colored with the approach of moon-rise.  White moths hovered dimly over the garden-beds, and the footsteps of night tip-toed through the bushes.  Suddenly Frank rose.

“Ah, it is the supreme moment,” he said softly.  “Now more than at any other time the current of life, the eternal imperishable current runs so close to me that I am almost enveloped in it.  Be silent a minute.”

He advanced to the edge of the terrace and looked out standing stretched with arms outspread.  Darcy heard him draw a long breath into his lungs, and after many seconds expel it again.  Six or eight times he did this, then turned back into the lamplight.

“It will sound to you quite mad, I expect,” he said, “but if you want to hear the soberest truth I have ever spoken and shall ever speak, I will tell you about myself.  But come into the garden if it is not too damp for you.  I have never told any one yet, but I shall like to tell you.  It is long, in fact, since I have even tried to classify what I have learned.”

They wandered into the fragrant dimness of the pergola, and sat down.  Then Frank began: 

“Years ago, do you remember,” he said, “we used often to talk about the decay of joy in the world.  Many impulses, we settled, had contributed to this decay, some of which were good in themselves, others that were quite completely bad.  Among the good things, I put what we may call certain Christian virtues, renunciation, resignation, sympathy with suffering, and the desire to relieve sufferers.  But out of those things spring very bad ones, useless renunciations, asceticism for its own sake, mortification of the flesh with nothing to follow, no corresponding gain that is, and that awful and terrible disease which devastated England some centuries ago, and from which by heredity of spirit we suffer now, Puritanism.  That was a dreadful plague, the brutes held and taught that joy and laughter and merriment were evil:  it was a doctrine the most profane and wicked.  Why, what is the commonest crime one sees?  A sullen face.  That is the truth of the matter.