spent among old books? But if a man _is_ weak, he doesn't want to assent
beforehand to his weakness; he wants to taste whatever sweetness there
may be in paying for the knowledge. So it is that it comes back--this
irresistible impulse to take my plunge--to let myself swing, to go where
liberty leads me." He paused a moment, fixing me with his excited eyes,
and perhaps perceived in my own an irrepressible smile at his perplexity.
"'Swing ahead, in Heaven's name,' you want to say, 'and much good may it
do you.' I don't know whether you are laughing at my scruples or at what
possibly strikes you as my depravity. I doubt," he went on gravely,
"whether I have an inclination toward wrong-doing; if I have, I am sure I
shall not prosper in it. I honestly believe I may safely take out a
license to amuse myself. But it isn't that I think of, any more than I
dream of, playing with suffering. Pleasure and pain are empty words to
me; what I long for is knowledge--some other knowledge than comes to us
in formal, colourless, impersonal precept. You would understand all this
better if you could breathe for an hour the musty in-door atmosphere in
which I have always lived. To break a window and let in light and air--I
feel as if at last I must _act_!"

"Act, by all means, now and always, when you have a chance," I answered.
"But don't take things too hard, now or ever. Your long confinement
makes you think the world better worth knowing than you are likely to
find it. A man with as good a head and heart as yours has a very ample
world within himself, and I am no believer in art for art, nor in what's
called 'life' for life's sake. Nevertheless, take your plunge, and come
and tell me whether you have found the pearl of wisdom." He frowned a
little, as if he thought my sympathy a trifle meagre. I shook him by the
hand and laughed. "The pearl of wisdom," I cried, "is love; honest love
in the most convenient concentration of experience! I advise you to fall
in love." He gave me no smile in response, but drew from his pocket the