Charles Kingsley's Works - v. 2 Author:Charles Kingsley Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. When Argemone rose in the morning, her first thought was of Lancelot. His face haunted her. The wild brilliance o... more »f his intellect struggling through foul smoke-clouds, had haunted her still more. She had heard of his profligacy, his bursts of fierce Berserk-madness; and yet now these very faults, instead of repelling, seemed to attract her, and intensify her longing to save him. She would convert him ; purify him ; harmonise his discords. And that very wish gave her a peace she had never fult before. She had formed her idea; she had now a purpose for which to live, and she determined to concentrate herself for the work, and longed for the moment when she should meet Lancelot, and begin —how, she did not very clearly see. It is an old jest—the fair devotee trying to conveit the young rake. Men of the world laugh heartily at it; and so does the devil, no doubt. If any readers wish to be fellow- jesters with that personage, they may; but, as sure as old Saxon women-worship remains for ever a blessed and healing law of life, the devotee may yet convert the rake—and, perhaps, herself into the bargain. Argemone looked almost angrily round at her beloved books and drawings ; for they spoke a message to her which they had never spoken before, of self-centered ambition. " Yes," she said aloud to herself, " I have been selfish, utterly ! Art, poetry, science—I believe, aftei all, that Ihave only loved them for my own sake, not for theirs, because they would make me something, feed my conceit of my own talents. How infinitely more glorious to find my work-field and my prize, not in dead forms and colours, or ink-and-paper theories, but in a living, immortal, human spirit! I will study no more, except the human heart, and only that to purif...« less