Many a time, while he stretched credulity to a point, I have heard

him apologize in some such way for his method. It was the splendour of

his belief that made the thing so convincing in the telling, for later

when I found the same tale written down it seemed somehow to have

failed of an equal achievement. The truth was that no one language

would convey the extraordinary freight that was carried so easily by

his instinctive choice of gestures, tone, and glance. With him these

were consummately interpretative. ––

Before the age of thirty he had written and published a volume or

two of curious tales, all dealing with extensions of the personality,

a subject that interested him deeply, and one he understood because he

drew the material largely from himself. Psychology he simply devoured,

even in its most fantastic and speculative forms; and though perhaps

his vision was incalculably greater than his power of technique, these

strange books had a certain value and formed a genuine contribution

to the thought on that particular subject. In England naturally they

fell dead, but their translation into German brought him a wider and

more intelligent circle. The common public unfamiliar with Sally

Beauchamp No. 4, with Hélène Smith, or with Dr. Hanna, found in these

studies of divided personality, and these singular extensions of the

human consciousness, only extravagance and imagination run to

wildness. Yet, none the less, the substratum of truth upon which

O’Malley had built them, lay actually within his own personal

experience. The books had brought him here and there acquaintances of

value; and among these latter was a German doctor, Heinrich Stahl.

With Dr. Stahl the Irishman crossed swords through months of somewhat

irregular correspondence, until at length the two had met on board a

steamer where the German held the position of ship’s doctor. The

acquaintanceship had grown into something approaching friendship,

although the two men stood apparently at the opposite poles of

thought. From time to time they still met.

In appearance there was nothing unusual about O’Malley, unless it

was the contrast of the light blue eyes with the dark hair. Never, I

think, did I see him in anything but that old grey flannel suit, with

the low collar and shabby glistening tie. He was of medium height,

delicately built, his hands more like a girl’s than a man’s. In towns

he shaved and looked fairly presentable, but once upon his travels he

grew beard and moustache and would forget for weeks to have his hair

cut, so that it fell in a tangle over forehead and eyes.

His manner changed with the abruptness of his moods. Sometimes

active and alert, at others for days together he would become absent,

dreamy, absorbed, half oblivious of the outer world, his movements and

actions dictated by subconscious instinct rather than regulated by

volition. And one cause of that loneliness of spirit which was

undoubtedly a chief pain in life to him, was the fact that ordinary

folk were puzzled how to take him, or to know which of these many

extreme moods was the man himself. Uncomfortable, unsatisfactory,

elusive, not to be counted upon, they deemed him: and from their point

of view they were undoubtedly right. The sympathy and above all the

companionship he needed, genuinely craved too, were thus denied to him

by the faults of his own temperament. With women his intercourse was

of the slightest; in a sense he did not know the need of them much.

For one thing, the feminine element in his own nature was too strong,

and he was not conscious, as most men are, of the great gap of

incompleteness women may so exquisitely fill; and, for another, its

obvious corollary perhaps, when they did come into his life, they gave

him more than he could comfortably deal with. They offered him more

than he needed.

In this way, while he perhaps had never fallen in love, as the

saying has it, he had certainly known that high splendour of devotion

which means the losing of oneself in others, that exalted love which

seeks not any reward of possession because it is itself so utterly

possessed. He was pure, too; in the sense that it never occurred to

him to be otherwise.