'How to do the big and simple things,' was the rejoinder; 'and do them
well, without applause. You have Belief.'

'Too much, perhaps. I simply can't get rid of it.'

'Don't try to. It's belief that moves the world; people want teachers
--that's my experience in the pulpit and the parish; a world in
miniature, after all--but they won't listen to a teacher who hasn't
got it. There are no great poets to-day, only great discoverers. The
poets, the interpreters of discovery, are gone--starved out of life by
ridicule, and by questions to which exact answers are impossible. With
your imagination and belief you might help a world far larger than
this parish of mine at any rate. I envy you.'

Goodness! how the kind eyes searched his own in this darkness. Though
little susceptible to flattery, he was aware of something huge the
words stirred in the depths of him, something far bigger than he yet
had dreamed of even in his boyhood, something that made his cherished
Scheme seem a little pale and faded.

'Take the whole world with you into fairyland,' he heard the low voice
come murmuring in his ear across the lilacs. And there was starlight
in it--that gentle, steady brilliance that steals into people while
they sleep and dream, tracing patterns of glory they may recognise
when they wake, yet marvelling whence it came. 'The world wants its
fairyland back again, and won't be happy till it gets it.'

A bird listening to them in the stillness sang a little burst of song,
then paused again to listen.