The Debatable Land

nd of the Philosoph

orehead against

ay to-night? But he would if he knew

e knew he knew it,

. Mavering, garmented in black and dusky red, lay back in a deep chair, and the firelight played across her face and dress in

hy

preciated than the service. Oh, it isn't like that, dear eyes!-not nearly so solemn!" Helen had come and curled herself at Mrs. Mavering's

lace of the king; and as if afterwards, when the palace had been sacked, and fallen with ruin and wailing, and the vase had somehow escaped destruction, it had come to stand in the guarded corner of a museum. In this meaning Thaddeus had s

bar to account for themselves. Thaddeus thought Mrs. Mavering should be looked at for art's sake, for the improvement of the to

ething, and I ask what you mean, you always act as if you didn't like what you meant, but you never say what it was." So far as our sayings come out of ourselves and ourselves out of our experience, if part of the experience were such that we wished to fly from that part of ourselves and could only flutter the more about it, supposing this to be Mrs. Mavering's case, her impulse to dodge Helen's bar of equi

Saint Mary's stood outside the while and thought he would rather talk to Mrs. Mavering

k and heapy, nor eyes change from gray to amber and brown; and in order to become as difficult it would be necessary to be married and hav

ing something, and driving a spear into the middle of an idea, as if it were a dragon.

with you. You're locked in a tower and I'm after an ogre, only I don'

say he

enis Montjoie! It is

nd presently came in

und a tower. I am locked in the tower. She doesn't care whether I like being

e, isn't he?" said Gard. "Maybe I'd

Helen, eagerly. "He keeps

s my tow

te like other people, a little weary and very white-faced, a little impenetrable. She rem

e without it," so that she said, hastily, "You must have one in the organ-loft," and was not at all sure that it meant anything, if it were not an entire mistake, and was glad when they sat down without

ir children have long hair. "And I have asked you three times to-day, 'Mother, please, may I cut it off?' and you just said, 'Why, Helen!' and I'm not going to ask again. I'm going to put you in the closing prayer." So that now she put her conclusion into a sermon, to the effect that every one had a tower in which part of himself or herself was a proud ogre, and another part was a valiant knight who ought to eventually thrust a lance into the middle of the ogre to make him humble

would be wrong in putting music in such an Eden. An organ is full of sin and sorrow. The pipes always seem to me to hold so many human emotions compressed and stowed away, like the genius in Solomon's bottle.

ed Helen. "Do you do sermons and parables

ng on round and round a tower, wasn't it? And if the tow

know!" said Hele

count of going so fast. Then they'd have to stop an

le was too mixed to mean anything now, an

th run about so fast," said Mrs. Mavering.

be proud in this tower," sa

all mi

s you unsatisfied at your strongest. It is misty emotion. It has wings

from you," sai

But I don't know whether he has said that conformity to the forms you have made yourself is as much death as conformity to those made by o

l yourself a stil

y bad, and highly praised by competent critics in journals; an offertory, in which Charity appears as despondent of the results of the collection-I'm conceited about that piece-and a symphony in five movements, which is a padded invalid. Room enough for improvement, you see. I might learn to symbolize a mood more accurately. It wouldn't make the mood any less futile. The point is really that it doesn't get you out of a rut, if

r if he had tried to make a shell for

tter of shells. But personally he would

e been very u

nformity was not comfortable.

k me, I don't think human life is better than music. I think music is the better of the two." Gar

e wings in gulfs enchanted, and all that. But isn't 'all that' rather a foolish thing to do fo

who gave the impression of wearing jewelry and really wore none, and the girl in white with a blue band at her throat, slim hands that somehow looked so strong, and gray ey

coming?" said Gard. "Trumpe

ing what the mental life then had been, but not very clearly what result had come out of it all. There were books in number and confusion, as if he did not care for them in a bookish way, but only as mines, clef

a soul alone, with the eternities watching and the one issue of its salvation before it, he had never been rid of that sense of things, but had only altered his conception of the issue, and so the terms of description and the method of pursuit. This sense of things, of life as a kind of personal adventure, a kind of fortune-hunting after an ideal of self-culture, an ambition for a mental career rather than one apparent outwardly to men, may have sprung from far back in his nature and been of precloistral origin, come slowly of late years to a

ts own perils, excitements, and ne

d brave eyes, that girl. One ought to see more of women. Mrs. Mavering looked like a kind of imperial exile. He sat down at the piano and touched a key thoughtfully. They signified something, surely, if o