'You have changed greatly since then,' he answered. 'I have read your
books, and now I see you among all these images, and I understand you
better than you do yourself, for I have been with many and many
dreamers at the same cross-ways. You have shut away the world and
gathered the gods about you, and if you do not throw yourself at
their feet, you will be always full of lassitude, and of wavering
purpose, for a man must forget he is miserable in the bustle and
noise of the multitude in this world and in time; or seek a mystical
union with the multitude who govern this world and time.' And then he
murmured something I could not hear, and as though to someone I could
not see.

For a moment the room appeared to darken, as it used to do when he
was about to perform some singular experiment, and in the darkness
the peacocks upon the doors seemed to glow with a more intense
colour. I cast off the illusion, which was, I believe, merely caused
by memory, and by the twilight of incense, for I would not
acknowledge that he could overcome my now mature intellect; and I
said: 'Even if I grant that I need a spiritual belief and some form
of worship, why should I go to Eleusis and not to Calvary?' He leaned
forward and began speaking with a slightly rhythmical intonation, and
as he spoke I had to struggle again with the shadow, as of some older
night than the night of the sun, which began to dim the light of the
candles and to blot out the little gleams upon the corner of picture-
frames and on the bronze divinities, and to turn the blue of the
incense to a heavy purple; while it left the peacocks to glimmer and
glow as though each separate colour were a living spirit. I had
fallen into a profound dream-like reverie in which I heard him
speaking as at a distance. 'And yet there is no one who communes with
only one god,' he was saying, 'and the more a man lives in