and these revealed that there had been a Father Anselm there a
hundred or more years before. Time had been blotted out while
he listened to the lark.

That, I suppose, was a case of beauty boiling over, or a soul boiling
over; perhaps the same thing. Then spirits walk.

They must sometimes walk St. Andrews. I do not mean the ghosts
of queens or prelates, but one that keeps step, as soft as snow,
with some poor student. He sometimes catches sight of it.
That is why his fellows can never quite touch him, their best
beloved; he half knows something of which they know nothing--the
secret that is hidden in the face of the Monna Lisa. As I see him,
life is so beautiful to him that its proportions are monstrous.
Perhaps his childhood may have been overfull of gladness;
they don't like that. If the seekers were kind he is the one for
whom the flags of his college would fly one day. But the seeker
I am thinking of is unfriendly, and so our student is 'the lad
that will never be told.' He often gaily forgets, and thinks
he has slain his foe by daring him, like him who, dreading water,
was always the first to leap into it. One can see him serene,
astride a Scotch cliff, singing to the sun the farewell thanks
of a boy:

'Throned on a cliff serene Man saw the sun
hold a red torch above the farthest seas,
and the fierce island pinnacles put on
in his defence their sombre panoplies;
Foremost the white mists eddied, trailed and spun
like seekers, emulous to clasp his knees,