He stared at me a moment, his eyes suddenly charged with dreams.

Then, characteristically, he snorted. He flung his hand out with a

gesture that should push the present further from him.

“I’ve always liked the Eastern theory—old theory anyhow if not

Eastern—that intense yearnings end by creating a place where they are

fulfilled–-”

“Subjectively–-”

“Of course; objectively means incompletely. I mean a Heaven built

up by desire and intense longing all your life. Your own thought makes

it. Living idea, that!”

“Another dream, Terence O’Malley,” I laughed, “but beautiful and

seductive.”

To argue bored him. He loved to state his matter, fill it with

detail, blow the heated breath of life into it, and then leave it.

Argument belittled without clarifying; criticism destroyed, sealing up

the sources of life. Any fool could argue; the small, denying minds

were always critics.

“A dream, but a damned foine one, let me tell you,” he exclaimed,

recovering his brogue in his enthusiasm. He glared at me a second,

then burst out laughing. “‘Tis better to have dhreamed and waked,” he

added, “than never to have dhreamed at all.”

And then he poured out O’Shaughnessy’s passionate ode to the

Dreamers of the world: We are the music-makers, And we are the

dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by

desolate streams; World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale

moon gleams; Yet we are the movers and shakers Of the world for ever,

it seems. With wonderful deathless ditties We build up the world’s

great cities, And out of a fabulous story We fashion an empire’s

glory; One man with a dream, at pleasure, Shall go forth and conquer

a crown; And three with a new song’s measure Can trample an empire

down. We, in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth, Built

Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And

o’erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world’s worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to

birth.

For this passion for some simple old-world innocence and beauty

lay in his soul like a lust—self-feeding and voracious.

III

"Lonely! Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?"--THOREAU.   MARCH had passed shouting away, and April was whispering deliciously among her scented showers when O'Malley went on board the coasting steamer at Marseilles for the Levant and the Black Sea. The mistral made the land unbearable, but herds of white horses ran galloping over the bay beneath a sky of childhood's blue. The ship started punctually--he came on board as usual with a bare minute's margin--and from his rapid survey of the thronged upper deck, it seems, he singled out on the instant this man and boy, wondering first vaguely at their uncommon air of bulk, secondly at the absence of detail which should confirm it. They appeared so much bigger than they actually were. The laughter, rising in his heart, however, did not get as far as his lips.  

For this appearance of massive bulk, and of shoulders comely yet

almost humped, was not borne out by a direct inspection. It was a

mental impression. The man, though broad and well-proportioned, with

heavy back and neck and uncommonly sturdy torso, was in no sense

monstrous. It was upon the corner of the eye that the bulk and

hugeness dawned, a false report that melted under direct vision.

O’Malley took him in with attention merging in respect, searching in

vain for the detail of back and limbs and neck that suggested so

curiously the sense of the gigantic. The boy beside him, obviously

son, possessed the same elusive attributes—felt yet never positively

seen.

Passing down to his cabin, wondering vaguely to what nationality

they might belong, he was immediately behind them, elbowing French and

German tourists, when the father abruptly turned and faced him. Their

gaze met. O’Malley started.

“Whew … !” ran some silent expression like fire through his

brain.