ities of the discussion had waned, the searcher turned back to his quest, regardless of the interlude, for, as Paul reflected, it is in the nature of youth that it must make mysteries for itself to solve, no matter how lucid a solution you lay before it.
The situation was tinged with paradox. He, who had held his teachers in low esteem, had arrived at the age of thirty to find himself a teacher. His own long process of self-searching had brought him to the pitiable conclusion that the purpose of his existence was to point out to other men the purpose of theirs! He could artistically think—which was to say philosophize—but he could not do. Whilst others performed doughty deeds, he must be content doughtily to theorize. Was that the splendid goal toward which one had so painfully striven? He wondered whether some such let-down were reserved for every man of thirty, or whether the let-down was evidence of his own futility. He classified himself as a creature—like countless other nondescript aliens in Paris—whose body was too heavy for its wings; or rather, a creature all wings and no body, consequently impotent against strong worldly winds.
In any case a failure—except in a limited sense. High time, then, to acknowledge the limitations, and act within one's rôle. He thought of Aunt Verona, his own mentor—Aunt Verona who, like himself, endowed with unusual gifts, had somehow lost heart and sought recourse in teaching, in preparing a prodigy for the destiny she had missed—a destiny which he, in turn, was to miss.
The whole of his property had been realized, and when the final draft had been forwarded he withdrew the money from his bank and deposited it elsewhere, thus removing the last link between himself and the life he had forsworn. He had taken rooms at the top of a bare old house in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, and passed for a student—a classification to which his habit of
