There was nothing to look forward to now, no secret full of riches and endless in hope--in short, no violin.
To feel the full force of his loss, my reader must remember that around the childhood of Robert, which he was fast leaving behind him, there had gathered no tenderness--none at least by him recognizable as such.

All the women he came in contact with were his grandmother and Betty.

He had no recollection of having ever been kissed.

From the darkness and negation of such an embryo-existence, his nature had been unconsciously striving to escape--struggling to get from below ground into the sunlit air--sighing after a freedom he could not have defined, the freedom that comes, not of independence, but of love--not of lawlessness, but of the perfection of law.

Of this beauty of life, with its wonder and its deepness, this unknown glory, his fiddle had been the type.