Edris! ... ah, the memory of her pure angel-loveliness rushed upon him like a flood of invigorating warmth and light, and when he looked up from his brief reverie, his countenance, beautiful, and kindling with inward ardor, affected Villiers strangely,—­almost as a very grand and perfect strain of music might affect and unsteady one’s nerves.  The attraction he had always felt for his poet-friend deepened to quite a fervent intensity of admiration, but he was not the man to betray his feelings outwardly, and to shake off his emotion he rushed into speech again.

“By the by, Alwyn, your old acquaintance, Professor Moxall, is very much ‘down’ on your book.  You know he doesn’t write reviews, except on matters connected with evolutionary phenomena, but I met him the other day, and he was quite upset about you.  ’Too transcendental’! he said, dismally shaking his bald pate to and fro—­’The whole poem is a vaporous tissue of absurd impossibilities!  Ah dear, dear me! what a terrible falling-off in a young man of such hopeful ability!  I thought he had done with poetry forever!—­I took the greatest pains to prove to him what a ridiculous pastime it was, and how unworthy to be considered for a moment seriously as an art,—­and he seemed to understand my reasoning thoroughly.  Indeed he promised to be one of our most powerful adherents, . . he had an excellent grasp of the material sciences, and a fine contempt for religion.  Why, with such a quick, analytical brain as his, he might have carried on Darwin’s researches to an extremer point of the origination of species than has yet been reached!  All a ruin, sir! a positive ruin,—­a man who will in cold blood write such lines as these ...

’"Grander is Death than Life, and sweeter far The splendors of the Infinite Future, than our eyes, Weary with tearful watching, yet can see”—­

condemns himself as a positive lunatic!  And young Alwyn too!—­he who had so completely recognized the foolishness and futility of expecting any other life than this one!  Good heavens! ...  “Nourhalma,” as I understand it, is a sort of pagan poem—­but with such incredible ideas and sentiments as are expressed in it, the author might as well go and be a Christian at once!’ And with that he hobbled off, for it was Sunday afternoon, and he was on his way to St. George’s Hall to delight the assembled skeptics, by telling them in an elaborate lecture what absurd animalculae they all were!”

Alwyn smiled.  There was a soft light in his eyes, an expression of serene contentment on his face.

“Poor old Moxall!” he said gently—­“I am sorry for him!  He makes life very desolate, both for himself and others who accept his theories.  I’m afraid his disappointment in me will have to continue, . . for as it happens I am a Christian,—­that is, so far as I can, in my unworthiness, be a follower of a faith so grand, and pure, and true!”

Villiers started, . . his month opened in sheer astonishment, . . he could scarcely believe his own ears, and he uttered some sound between a gasp and an exclamation of incredulity.  Alwyn met his widely wondering gaze with a most sweet and unembarrassed calm.