410
PARTISAN REVIEW
vated form and to the general, all that
his
friend "knew" could
speak only when addressed by the idea-all will be disclosed
in
final
dependency upon the word alone. The blessing and the perjury.
But to comprehend this was not to abandon Flint nor to win
release from the revulsion at the words which had been spoken over
porter.
It
was only to stand like stone upon the vantage ground and
see-at a hopeless distance-something intolerably rich and vague.
True, Douglas could advance to the perception that to have built
upon the word, however extravagantly, would be to have built
in
the direction of the city, and that to have con:.tructed
in
fortune's
words, to have responded only to the stuff of the constructed world,
would be to rise firm from the given as no Flint could.
But his sense of the conditional opposed the excitement of this
intelligence: here at two o'clock in October was no choice but to
admit that the calendar would run past him: at this thought he
wept at last-for himself and for his friend. Amid the tumult of the
great bell he then rose, prescient in his grief. He walked quite quickly
through the room which was now dense with the clapper's ovation
and the swelling sun; and he answered the knocking at his door by
greeting Oliver Allen with some spirit.
