That same night when Alwyn related his day’s adventure to Villiers, who heard it with the most absorbed interest, he was describing the effect of Sarasate’s violin-playing, when all at once he was seized by the same curious, overpowering impression of white, lofty arches, stained windows, and jewel-like glimmerings of color, and he suddenly stopped short in the midst of his narrative.

“What’s the matter?” asked Villiers, astonished.  “Go on!—­you were saying,—­”

“That Sarasate is one of the divinest of God’s wandering melodies,” went on Alwyn, slowly and with a faint smile.  “And that though, as a rule, musicians are forgotten when their music ceases, this Andalusian Orpheus in Thrace will be remembered long after his violin is laid aside, and he himself has journeyed to a sunnier land than Spain!  But I am not master of my thoughts to-night, Villiers; my Chaldean friend has perhaps mesmerized me—­who knows! and I have an odd fancy upon me.  I should like to spend an hour in some great and beautiful cathedral, and see the light of the rising sun flashing through the stained windows across the altar!”

“Poet and dreamer!” laughed Villiers.  “You can’t gratify that whim in London; there’s no ‘great and beautiful’ edifice of the kind here,—­only the unfinished Oratory, Westminster Abbey, broken up into ugly pews and vile monuments, and the repellently grimy St. Paul’s—­so go to bed, old boy, and indulge yourself in some more ‘visions,’ for I assure you you’ll never find any reality come up to your ideal of things in general.”

“No?” and Alwyn smiled.  “Strange that I see it in quite the reverse way!  It seems to me, no ideal will ever come up to the splendor of reality!”

“But remember,” said Villiers quickly, “Your reality is heaven,—­ a, ‘reality’ that is every one else’s myth!”

“True! terribly true!".. and Alwyn’s eyes darkened sorrowfully.  “Yet the world’s myth is the only Eternal Real, and for the shadows of this present Seeming we barter our immortal Substance!”

CHAPTER XXXIX.

By the Rhine.

In the two or three weeks that followed his meeting with Heliobas, Alwyn made up his mind to leave London for a while.  He was tired and restless,—­tired of the routine society more or less imposed upon him,—­restless because he had come to a standstill in his work—­an invisible barrier, over which his creative fancy was unable to take its usual sweeping flight.  He had an idea of seeking some quiet spot among mountains, as far remote as possible from the travelling world of men,—­a peaceful place, where, with the majestic silence of Nature all about him, he might plead in lover-like retirement with his refractory Muse, and strive to coax her into a sweeter and more indulgent humor.  It was not that thoughts were lacking to him,—­what he complained of was the monotony of language and the difficulty of finding