Something of this the listener had to urge.
Senhouse admitted it, but he said, "You know that the splendour is
enacting behind. You guess the opening of the rose. One stalks this earth
agog for miracles. It is full of hints--you catch a moment--for flashed
instants you are God. Then the mist wraps you, and you blunder forward,
two-legged man swaying for a balance. Translate the oracle as you will--
with your paint-pans, with your words--we get broken lights, half-phrases.
But we guess the rest, and so we strain and grow. Who are you or I, that
we should know her!"
He stuffed the pages into the breast of his jelab, and sat brooding over
the paling fire for a while; then, by an abrupt transition, he said--"A
fatal inclination for instructing the young was, perhaps, my undoing. I
believe that I am a prig to the very fibres of me. If I had kept my
didactics for my own sex, all might have gone well: I have never doubted
but that I had things to teach my generation which it would be the happier
of knowing. But it's a dangerous power to put into a man's hands that he
shall instruct his betters. I was tempted by that deadliest flattery of
all, and I fell. Despoina heard me, smiled at me, and went her way
regardlessly; but my poor Mary was a victim.
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