Page:The Great Secret.djvu/193

Rh lived from my time down to yours. We still have our art and our literary evenings, for my Hesperia was a great philosopher and poetess in her day, and therefore naturally attracts the kindred spirit. I am not much of a speaker—painters seldom are—but she can do that for me."

Philip thrilled at this promise. His idea of heaven had been the meeting of those great minds who had gone before. The painters—Titian, Tintoretto, Rembrandt; the sculptors of early Greece ; the poets—Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Coleridge, Byron, Burns. To behold and converse with them, almost his own contemporaries, with a glimpse of the older giants—Socrates, Plato, Confucius, Guatamos, Bacon, Bunyan—ah, yes, he would like one hour with honest John of Bedford, the man who had faith enough to move mountains. Bunyan, the inspired man of the people, who, without education or polish, yet ascended to such lofty heights of intuition and foresight. Burns, the man also of the people, who had the true poet's ear for Nature's melody. He could worship both these sons of God as he did this refined and cultured painter of the past ages—this Imenus, who cared so little for his rare culture, yet valued the God-gift that had enabled him to tower above his fellows.

Philip Mortlake was unconsciously a hero worshipper. Raphael's name had become a tradition to him. The name of the greater Imenus was an unknown one, therefore did not inspire him for the present with the same awe. He was a beautiful young man in appearance, with a broad, low brow and clustering dark locks, with sunny, brown eyes and laughing lips, yet across the young brows lay tiny lines of thought, and in the sunny eyes a strength of purpose and a god-like ideal;