had already found tongues to speak of a still living humanity--
somewhere, somewhere, in the world!--waiting for him in the distance,
or perchance already on its way, to explain, by its own plenary
beauty and power, why wine and roses and the languorous summer
afternoons were so delightful. So far indeed, the imaginative heat,
that might one day enter into dangerous rivalry with simple old-
fashioned faith, was blent harmoniously with it. They [23] were
hardly distinguishable elements of an amiable character, susceptible
generally to the poetic side of things--two neighbourly apprehensions
of a single ideal.

The great passions, the fervid sentiments, of which Gaston dreamed as
the true realisation of life, have not always softened men's natures:
they have been compatible with many cruelties, as in the lost spirits
of that very age. They may overflow, on the other hand, in more
equable natures, through the concurrence of happier circumstance,
into that universal sympathy which lends a kind of amorous power to
the homeliest charities. So it seemed likely to be with Gaston de
Latour. Sorrow came along with beauty, a rival of its intricate
omnipresence in life. In the sudden tremor of an aged voice, the
handling of a forgotten toy, a childish drawing, in the tacit
observance of a day, he became aware suddenly of the great stream of
human tears falling always through the shadows of the world. For
once the darling of old age actually more than responded in full to
its tenderness. In the isolation of his life there had been little
demand for sympathy on the part of those anywhere near his own age.
So much the larger was the fund of superfluous affection which went
forth, with a delicacy not less than their own, to meet the
sympathies of the aged people who cherished him. In him, their old,
almost forgotten sorrows bled anew.