In London he had found
that the same attitude rendered him unusual, not to say ridiculous.
Had the Absolute abandoned him, or had he abandoned the Absolute, when
it no longer ministered to his personal prestige? Jewdwine was aware
that, however it was, his case exemplified the inevitable collapse of
a soul nourished mainly upon formulas. Yet behind that moral wreckage
there remained the far-off source of spiritual illumination, the inner
soul that judged him, as it judged all things, holding the pellucid
immaterial view. Its vision had never been bound, even by the
_Prolegomena_. If he had trusted it he might have been numbered among
those incorruptible spirits that preserve the immortal purity of
letters. As it was, that supreme intelligence was only a light by
which he saw clearly his own damnation.
CHAPTER LXXVII
Meanwhile the Junior Journalists found amusement in discussing whether
the great dramatist were Maddox's discovery or Jewdwine's. With the
readers of _Metropolis_ he passed as Jewdwine's--which was all that
Jewdwine wanted. With the earnest aspiring public, striving to admire
Keith Rickman because they had been told they ought to, he passed as
their own. The few who had known him from the first knew also that
poets like Rickman are never discovered until they discover
themselves. Maddox, whom much worship had made humble, gave up the
absurd pretension. Enough that he lived, and was known to live, with
Rickman as his friend.
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