This
was exactly what he had felt himself--with the difference that his own
thought had been, perhaps, emotion rather than a reasoned-out idea.
His cousin put it into words and gave it form. A picture--had he seen
it in a book perhaps?--flashed across his mind. A child, suspiciously
like Monkey, held a pen and dipped it into something bright and
flowing. A little boy with big blue eyes gathered this shining stuff
in both hands and poured it in a golden cataract upon the eyelids of a
sleeping figure. And the figure had a beard. It was a man ...
familiar. ... A touch of odd excitement trembled through his undermind
... thrilled ... vanished. ...
All dived out of sight again with the swiftness of a darting swallow.
His cousin was talking at high speed. Rogers had lost a great deal of
what he had been saying.
'... it may, of course, have come from something you said the other
night as we walked up the hill to supper--you remember?--something
about the brilliance of our stars here and how they formed a shining
network that hung from Boudry and La Tourne. It's impossible to say.
The germ of a true inspiration is never discoverable. Only, I
remember, it struck me as an odd thing for _you_ to say. I was telling
you about my idea of the scientist who married--no, no, it wasn't
that, it was my story of the materialist doctor whom circumstances
compelled to accept a position in the Community of Shakers, and how
the contrast produced an effect upon his mind of--of--you remember,
perhaps? It was one or the other; I forget exactly,'--then suddenly--
'No, no, I've got it--it was the analysis of the father's mind when he
found----'
'Yes, yes,' interrupted Rogers.
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