picture, whose whole mind is set on manful things, untroubled by the
love of woman, and yet finding all the world intensely gracious and
beautiful, full of eager frankness, even impatience, with long, slim,
straight limbs and close-curled hair. I knew him to be the sort of being
that painters and poets had been feeling after when they represented or
spoke of angels. And I could not help laughing outright at the thought
of the meek, mild, statuesque draped figures, with absurd wings and
depressing smiles, that encumbered pictures and churches, with whom no
human communication would be possible, and whose grave and discomfiting
glance would be fatal to all ease or merriment. I recognised in Amroth
a mirthful soul, full of humour and laughter, who could not be shocked
by any truth, or hold anything uncomfortably sacred--though indeed he
held all things sacred with a kind of eagerness that charmed me. Instead
of meeting him in dolorous pietistic mood, I met him, I remember, as at
school or college one suddenly met a frank, smiling, high-spirited youth
or boy, who was ready at once to take comradeship for granted, and
walked away with one from a gathering, with an outrush of talk and plans
for further meetings. It was all so utterly unlike the subdued and
cautious and sensitive atmosphere of devotion that it stirred us both,
I was aware, to a delicious kind of laughter. And then came a swift
interchange of thought, which I must try to represent by speech, though
speech was none.

"I am glad to find you, Amroth," I said. "I was just beginning to wonder
if I was not going to be lonely."

"Ah," he said, "one has what one desires here; you had too much to see
and learn at first to want my company. And yet I have been with you,
pointing out a thousand things, ever since you came here."