Ardath - Page 400/417

"Poet and dreamer!" laughed Villiers. "You can't gratify that whim in London; there's no 'great and beautiful' edifice of the kind here,--only the unfinished Oratory, Westminster Abbey, broken up into ugly pews and vile monuments, and the repellently grimy St. Paul's--so go to bed, old boy, and indulge yourself in some more 'visions,' for I assure you you'll never find any reality come up to your ideal of things in general."

"No?" and Alwyn smiled. "Strange that I see it in quite the reverse way! It seems to me, no ideal will ever come up to the splendor of reality!"

"But remember," said Villiers quickly, "YOUR reality is heaven,-- a, 'reality' that is every one else's myth!"

"True! terribly true!".. and Alwyn's eyes darkened sorrowfully. "Yet the world's myth is the only Eternal Real, and for the shadows of this present Seeming we barter our immortal Substance!"