It
may be Christmas, it may be only To-morrow, but equally it may be the
End of the World. Something is coming--into the heart--something
satisfying. It is the eternal beginning. It is the--dawn.
Long after the children had retired to bed Uncle Felix sat up alone in
the big house thinking. He made himself cosy in the library, meaning
to finish a chapter of the historical novel he had sadly neglected
these past days, and he set himself to the work with a will. But, try
as he would, the story would not run; he fixed his mind upon the scene
in vain; he concentrated hard, visualised the place and characters as
his habit was, reconstructed the incidents and conversation exactly as
though he had seen them happen and remembered them--but the
imagination that should have given them life failed to operate. It
became a mere effort of invention. The characters would not talk of
their own accord; the incidents did not flow in a stream as when he
worked successfully; life was not in them. He began again, wrote and
rewrote, but failed to seize the atmosphere of reality that alone
could make them interesting. Interest--he suddenly realised it--had
vanished.
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