A few moments after their arrival and with the advent of tea, he had accomplished what she had fervently wished for the night she had met him—­he succeeded, by several easy moves, in isolating her from her aunt, and, notwithstanding her admiration, her desire to tap with her knuckles the metal of her idol and listen for a ring of hollowness, she was alarmed.  Yet, perversely, she knew that he would not exhibit his paces before his wife—­naturally a disinterested spectator—­or before her aunt, who was hardly “intimate” enough.  The long-desired hour found her disquieted.  She did not have many moments to analyze these mixed emotions, for he spoke, and his voice was agreeably modulated.

“You, indeed, honour the poor poet’s abode with your youth and your responsive soul, Miss Adams.  I thank you, though my gratitude will seem as poor as my hospitality.”  She looked at him now, a little fluttered.  “You bring to me across seas the homage of a fresh nation, a fresh nature.”  She beat a mental retreat at these calm, confident phrases; what could he know of her homage?  “And if Amiel has said, ’Un paysage est un etat de l’ame,’ I may amend it by calling my soul a state of landscape, since it has been visited by your image.”  This was more reassuring, if exuberant.

“Man is mere inert matter when born, but his soul is his own work.  Hence, I assert:  the Creator of man is—­man.” Now she felt at ease.  This wisdom, hewn from the vast quarry of his genius, she had encountered before in his Golden Glaze, that book which had built temples of worship in America wherein men and women sought and found the pabulum for living beautifully.  He was “talking” his book.  Why not?  It was certainly delightful plagiarism!

“You know, dear young lady,” he continued, and his eyes, with their contracting and expanding disks, held her attention like a clear flame, “do you know that my plays, my books, are but the drama of my conscience exteriorized?  Out of the reservoirs of my soul I draw my inspiration.  I have an aesthetic horror of evidence; like Renan, I loathe the deadly heresy of affirmation; I have the certitude of doubt, for are we poets not the lovers of the truth decorated?  When I built my lordly palace of art, it was not with the ugly durability of marble.  No; like the Mohammedan who constructed his mosque and mingled with the cement sweet-smelling musk, so I dreamed my mosque into existence with music wedded to philosophy.  Music and philosophy are the twin edges of my sword.  Ah! you smile and ask, Where is Woman in this sanctuary?  She is not barred, I assure you.  My music—­is Woman.  Beauty is a promise of happiness, Stendhal says.  I go further:  Life—­the woman one has; Art—­the woman one loves!”