Konx Om Pax

72 KONX OM PAX the love of his only brother burnt strong in him, and the hunger for his face. Basil, looking upon the blind face of the desert, his body withered in the furnace of the sand, had seen God face to face, and died. Basil spoke, therefore, as a dead God speaks, and only children understood him. At Gibraltar, on the way home, he had fallen in with Denzil Roberts, that foolish globe-trotter, secularist, and philanthropist-at-large. Den zil had just returned from a silly “ sentimental journey” through Spain, and gazing on the sunset from the western tower of the Alhambra he had come nigh to seeing God. Saddened and sane, be yet could recognize the magnificent insanity of Basil, and had come home with him to learn the way to the gate that men call Madness. The fourth occupant of the room was Arthur’s oldest friend—nay, master. Desperate research, life risked again and again in strange ways, in comprehensible to the swinish multitude, steady purpose ever equili brating each thought with its opposite, had brought him at the end to the mastery of things. So earnestly would he gaze on God, and die, that God had given him of His own life, and sent him among men. But men knew him not. Only the babes could understand his strange grave smile. The fifth man was a classical scholar; much learning had made him mad. Yet, well as he knew Greek and Latin, he had not yet read enough to see therein the luminous image of the Creator. Last was a doctor who, gazing ever on madness, had himself become mad. He, too, saw God, but, being already mad, died not. Men thought they understood him, and for that reviled him. Being mad, he did not care. All these men smoked heavily, and the silence of the world lay upon them.