He was a tall, slender youth
with a white face and melancholy black eyes, and black locks falling
in cascades about his ears; he sat in an Oriental corner, with a
manuscript copied in tiny handwriting upon delicately scented "art
paper," and tied with passionate purple ribbons. A young girl clad
in white sat by his side and held a candle, while he read from this
manuscript his unprinted (because unprintable) verses.
And between the readings the young poet talked. He talked about
himself and his work--apparently. that was what he had come to talk
about. His words flowed like a swift stream, limpid, sparkling,
incessant; leaping from place to place--here, there, quick as the
play of light upon the water. Montague laboured to follow the
speaker's ideas, until he found his mind in a whirl and gave it up.
Afterward, when he thought it over, he laughed at himself; for
Strathcona's ideas were not serious things, having relationship to
truth--they were epigrams put together to dazzle the hearer,
studies in paradox, with as much relation to life as fireworks.
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