shining shapes Protean,--alas! its gates are shut upon me now, and
I shall enter it no more!"

"'No more' is a long time, my friend!" interposed Heliobas gently.
"You are too despondent,--perchance too diffident, concerning your
own ability."

"Ability!" and he laughed wearily. "I have none,--I am as weak and
inapt as an untaught child--the music of my heart is silenced! Yet
there is nothing I would not do to regain the ravishment of the
past--when the sight of the sunset across the hills, or the moon's
silver transfiguration of the sea filled me with deep and
indescribable ecstasy--when the thought of Love, like a full chord
struck from a magic harp, set my pulses throbbing with delirious
delight--fancies thick as leaves in summer crowded my brain--Earth
was a round charm hung on the breast of a smiling Divinity--men
were gods--women were angels'--the world seemed but a wide scroll
for the signatures of poets, and mine, I swore, should be clearly
written!"

He paused, as though ashamed of his own fervor. and glanced at
Heliobas, who, leaning a little forward in his chair was regaling
him with friendly, attentive interest; then he continued more
calmly:

"Enough! I think I had something in me then,--something that was
new and wild and, though it may seem self praise to say so, full
of that witching glamour we name Inspiration; but whatever that
something was, call it genius, a trick of song, what you will,--it
was soon crushed out of me. The world is fond of slaying its