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 "In my arms the vision takes life from me, leaving me but a soul. The enchanted laughter under my lips becomes a healing caress. My eyes, for the fullness of seeing, close. The ethereal figure which was beautiful is now a part of me, a supplement. With it I am become the universe. The music has grown so full-toned, it is beyond hearing, just as my eyes in the fullness of seeing merged into the vision and ceased to see. The music has become as great as the universe; it is the vesture enveloping the universe which I, by uniting with my fleeting vision, have become. With the fullness of feeling we have ceased to feel."

Paul was warned by a specialist that he must leave Paris at once and seek some mountain resort.

"But it's a luxury I can't afford these days," said the invalid.

The specialist held open the door of his consulting-room. "Alors, mon pauvre ami, unless you do as I say, life itself is a luxury you can't afford."

The remark took Paul's fancy. "That's what I've been telling myself for many a year," he replied.

He walked into the bright April sunshine and directed his footsteps toward the Luxembourg gardens. Under a canopy of trees on which budding leaves shot forth like green flames from gas jets, lolled students wearing black hats and red neckties, idly addressing themselves to books and sketch-blocks. He pushed on towards the round pound, where children were sailing boats, and paused to watch them, marvelling at their obliviousness of the doom that overshadowed them. They were as exuberantly unconscious of their sad mortality as the hyacinths were unconscious of the rain-cloud encroaching on the blue and golden glories of the afternoon sky.

He left the park to the innocents who infested it, to