'A far more beautiful mind first
projected it into that network which binds all minds together. 'Twas
thence you caught it flying, and, knowing not how to give it shape,
transferred it to another--who could use it--for others.... Thought is
Life, and Sympathy is living....'
The voice died away; he could not hear the remainder clearly; the
passing scenery caught his attention again; during his reverie it had
been unnoticed utterly. 'Thought is Life, but Sympathy is living---'
it rolled and poured through him as he repeated it. Snatches of
another sentence then came rising into him from an immense distance,
falling upon him from immeasurable heights--barely audible:-
'... from a mind that so loved the Pleiades she made their loveliness
and joy her own... Alcyone, Merope, Maia...' It dipped away into
silence like a flower closing for the night, and the train, he
realised, was slackening speed as it drew into the hideous Gare de
Lyon.
'I'll talk to Minks about it, perhaps,' he thought, as he stood
telling the Customs official that he had no brandy, cigarettes, or
lace. 'He knows about things like that. At any rate, he'll
sympathise.'
He went across Paris to the Gare du Nord, and caught the afternoon
boat train to London. The sunshine glared up from the baking streets,
but he never forgot that overhead, though invisible, the stars were
shining all the time--Starlight, the most tender and least suspected
light in all the world, shining bravely even when obscured by the
Interfering Sun, and the Pleiades, softest, sweetest little group
among them all.
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