For twenty pages perhaps, he
read slowly, carefully,
dutifully, with pauses for
self-examination and working
out examples. Then, just as it
was working up and the pauses
should have been more
scrupulous than ever, a kind
of swoon and ecstasy would
fall on him, and he read
ravening on, sitting up till
dawn to finish the book, as
though it were a novel. After
that his passion was stayed;
the book went back to the
Library and he was done with
mathematics till the next
bout. Not much remained with
him after these orgies, but
something remained: a
sensation in the mind, a
worshiping acknowledgment of
something isolated and
unassailable, or a remembered
mental joy at the rightness of
thoughts coming together to a
conclusion, accurate thoughts,
thoughts in just intonation,
coming together like
unaccompanied voices coming to
a close.
-- Warner, Sylvia T. ; Mr.
Fortune's maggot
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