"Then there was Pater, Pater the classic, Pater the scholar, who had
already written the greatest English prose: I think a page or two of
the greatest prose in all literature. Pater meant everything to me. He
taught me the highest form of art: the austerity of beauty. I came to
my full growth with Pater. He was a sort of silent, sympathetic elder
brother. Fortunately for me he could not talk at all; but he was an
admirable listener, and I talked to him by the hour. I learned the
instrument of speech with him, for I could see by his face when I had
said anything extraordinary. He did not praise me but quickened me
astonishingly, forced me always to do better than my best--an intense
vivifying influence, the influence of Greek art at its supremest."

"He was the Gamaliel then?" I questioned, "at whose feet you sat?"

"Oh, no, Frank," he chided, "everyone sat at my feet even then. But
Pater was a very great man. Dear Pater! I remember once talking to
him when we were seated together on a bench under some trees in
Oxford. I had been watching the students bathing in the river: the
beautiful white figures all grace and ease and virile strength. I had
been pointing out how Christianity had flowered into romance, and how
the crude Hebraic materialism and all the later formalities of an
established creed had fallen away from the tree of life and left us
the exquisite ideals of the new paganism....

"The pale Christ had been outlived: his renunciations and his
sympathies were mere weaknesses: we were moving to a synthesis of art
where the enchanting perfume of romance should be wedded to the severe
beauty of classic form. I really talked as if inspired, and when I
paused, Pater--the stiff, quiet, silent Pater--suddenly slipped from
his seat and knelt down by me and kissed my hand. I cried: