Ay,
ay, smile on, Mac, you and Ned! I shall not quarrel with you for not
understanding me; it is only just now that I have learned to understand
myself. My Art will reward me; even now, while you doubt, it is already
doing so. I tell you, you two, whom I love and honor", cried he, rising to
his feet, lifted up, as it were, by the exaltation of his soul, while his
voice rose like the gush of a fine-toned flute, "I tell you, moreover, that
I am an artist, with a work to do that shall be done, and so done that you
two who love me will be the first to salute me Artist, to recognize me, and
acknowledge me for what I shall become."
"We do that already, Clarian," said Mac's emphatic voice.
"No," said Clarian, firmly, proudly, like a poet about to kneel that he may
receive the laurel crown, "no, you do not know me yet."
And he was right. We did not yet know him.
"That is a boy after my own heart", said Mac, after we had returned to our
room. He was standing by the open window, and I at his elbow, both of us
thinking of the strange child we had just left, while our eyes took note of
the fair night, how the silvery sheen of the moonlight glistened upon the
leaves, and sprinkled itself in dappling flecks between the trees on the
soft even sward of the campus below. "A boy after my own heart,--and, in
spite of all his twaddle, will make an artist. It's in him."
"But did you not think him strangely wild to-night? I never heard him talk
so fluently; but it was not the talk of a sane man.
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