That he was hard to understand Hester knew, for she understood enough of
him to believe that where she did not understand him he was perhaps only
the better worth understanding. She knew how, lover of music as she was,
she did not at first care for Bach; and how in the process of learning
to play what he wrote she came to understand him.
To her reference to Browning then, Vavasor did not venture a reply. None
of the poetry indeed by him cultivated was of any sort requiring study.
The difficulty Hester found in his song came of her trying to see more
than was there; her eyes made holes in it, and saw the less. Vavasor's
mental condition was much like that of one living in a vacuum or sphere
of nothing, in which the sole objects must be such as he was creator
enough to project from himself. He had no feeling that he was in the
heart of a crowded universe, between all whose great verities moved
countless small and smaller truths. Little notion had he that to learn
these after the measure of their importance, was his business, with
eternity to do it in! He made of himself but a cock, set for a while on
the world's heap to scratch and pick.
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