I have lived more in the past six weeks than in all the years that preceded them.  I am filled with this feverish sense of liberation; it keeps rising to my head like the fumes of strong wine.  I find I am an active, sentient, intelligent creature, with desires, with passions, with possible convictions—­even with what I never dreamed of, a possible will of my own!  I find there is a world to know, a life to lead, men and women to form a thousand relations with.  It all lies there like a great surging sea, where we must plunge and dive and feel the breeze and breast the waves.  I stand shivering here on the brink, staring, longing, wondering, charmed by the smell of the brine and yet afraid of the water.  The world beckons and smiles and calls, but a nameless influence from the past, that I can neither wholly obey nor wholly resist, seems to hold me back.  I am full of impulses, but, somehow, I am not full of strength.  Life seems inspiring at certain moments, but it seems terrible and unsafe; and I ask myself why I should wantonly measure myself with merciless forces, when I have learned so well how to stand aside and let them pass.  Why shouldn’t I turn my back upon it all and go home to—­what awaits me?—­to that sightless, soundless country life, and long days spent among old books?  But if a man is weak, he doesn’t want to assent beforehand to his weakness; he wants to taste whatever sweetness there may be in paying for the knowledge.  So it is that it comes back—­this irresistible impulse to take my plunge—­to let myself swing, to go where liberty leads me.”  He paused a moment, fixing me with his excited eyes, and perhaps perceived in my own an irrepressible smile at his perplexity.  “‘Swing ahead, in Heaven’s name,’ you want to say, ’and much good may it do you.’  I don’t know whether you are laughing at my scruples or at what possibly strikes you as my depravity.  I doubt,” he went on gravely, “whether I have an inclination toward wrong-doing; if I have, I am sure I shall not prosper in it.  I honestly believe I may safely take out a license to amuse myself.  But it isn’t that I think of, any more than I dream of, playing with suffering.  Pleasure and pain are empty words to me; what I long for is knowledge—­some other knowledge than comes to us in formal, colourless, impersonal precept.  You would understand all this better if you could breathe for an hour the musty in-door atmosphere in which I have always lived.  To break a window and let in light and air—­I feel as if at last I must act!”

“Act, by all means, now and always, when you have a chance,” I answered.  “But don’t take things too hard, now or ever.  Your long confinement makes you think the world better worth knowing than you are likely to find it.  A man with as good a head and heart as yours has a very ample world within himself, and I am no believer in art for art, nor in what’s called ‘life’ for life’s sake.  Nevertheless, take your