264 MYSTIC ISLES 



tical Christ, arrested my hand. I had known it all at 

 first hand, asking no favor. I believed that he would be 

 worse off than in his chicken-coop. He could wear any- 

 thing or nearly nothing in Tahiti, and his old Prince 

 Albert comforted him; but he would have to conform 

 to dress rules in a stricter civilization. Nature was a 

 loving mother here and a shrewish hag there, at least 

 toward the poor. And yet I was uneasy at my own 

 argument. 



For a month or two he had led the talk between us 

 and any others in the pare to new discoveries in medi- 

 cine. From his Fa'a seclusion he followed these very 

 closely through European publications, for which his 

 slender funds went. He had a curiously opposed na- 

 ture, quoting with enthusiasm the idealistic philoso- 

 phers, and descending into such abject materialism as 

 haunting the bishop's palace for the cigar-stubs. 



He would say that the purest joy in life is that which 

 lifts us out of our daily existence and transforms us into 

 disinterested spectators of it. 



"This divine release from the common ways of men 

 can be found only through art," Stroganoff would apos- 

 trophize. "The final and only true solution of life is to 

 be found in the life of the saint. True moralit}^ passes 

 through virtue, which is rooted in sympathy into asceti- 

 cism. Renunciation only offers a complete release from 

 the evils and terrors of existence." 



Kelly was on the bench one day when the Russian 

 uttered this rule of the cenobite school. They were 

 good friends, but differed. They agreed that the world 

 was sick and needed a radical medicine. Kelly was for 

 a complete cure by ending private business through the 



