XIV

"THE wonder of our being.

The words sounded on in my mind and recalled what Dr. Redman had said months before: that he who realises the mystery of all things in life is not likely to be made ill by one manifestation of it. I understood what he meant. It explained the dwindling concern about my visitant. I was interested in him, certainly; but I was far more interested in mysteries nearer at hand, of this world rather than of the world of dream, or from whatever world it was he came. One mystery seemed to belong to a state of sickness, the other to a state of health, and promised deeper health; to it, moreover, was added the excitement of a clue, on the thread of which my fingers were closing.

I was awake to the wonder of our being; ready to learn, that is to say. And the greatest wonder was that my blunt stupid confession and Corinna's outburst of anger did not scatter the holiness but increased it. Nor was it less of a fact for its mystery. It was as real as the smell of an onion. To some, perhaps, it may not be a mystery, just as some may know why an onion smells rank and a tulip faintly delicious.

Two things were clear about this holiness, this state of health with its large promise of an everwidening prospect: one was that self-satisfaction, for

which Dr. Redman and Corinna chid me, slew it; the other was that honesty, into whatever depths of silliness or turpitude it might seem to point, always encouraged it to thrive. Self-satisfaction slammed down like an iron shutter, and left you, impenetrable, alone with your stagnant little self; honesty threw open the windows.

But to think with me was still to worry, and I could not worry. I rejoiced too deeply in the knowledge that a great beauty which I thought had passed from my life had become more intimately mine. The tumult of gladness crushed the small voice piping that a rejected suitor ought not to be glad. Not to be glad? I was glad. Isn't a little boy glad who has sighed for the moon and been given an electric torch?

I shall never forget the talk I had with Corinna next morning. It sweetened every recess of my being. I emerged from the chrysalis a whole man. Much must have happened in the mind of Paul of Tarsus (I've never liked him) before the heavens opened and he heard the great voice of God. I have tried to recount the happenings in mine. In my earliest stirrings I had dreaded some kind of conversion, lest I might be forced into some box of the devout. Conversion, after all, awaited me, though not of the kind I had imagined, the only kind I had been able to imagine - - not a shutting off, but an opening out from vagueness and shadows and dread and an obscure sense of sin, to light and fulness and completion. Oh, I may stumble by the way, but I know the direction now. I know the light is there. I have

seen what I can never forget, what no man could forget when the knowledge blazed upon him as it blazed upon me. I know what to pray for. I know what I want to attain. I know that freedom lies within a man, and that freedom is in the gift of Love. Spring loosening the earth from the hold of winter; rain on a parched land; sunshine bursting the veils of mist; to every token of health and vigour, beauty, growth and life her coming gave intention.

Corinna talked with me that morning. She said many wonderful things to me, but a greater wonder than anything spoken lay in my own developed consciousness of the holiness of her presence. Corinna's power was her womanliness her grace, her charm, her quality; and she was honest as a spring wind. Yet there was nothing blunt or manly about her honesty. A difference exists, though I cannot define it, between a woman's honesty and a man's, just as there is a difference between a boy's running and a girl's.

I was a little fearful of the talk, although I looked forward to it with nearly all my heart. I had to brace myself to hear the whiplash crack with the thought of how much good a sting or two would do me, and of how much I deserved it. But no whiplash cracked. She was pleased and shy when she came into my room, and talked of other things, putting me more and more at my ease, leading me up (or opening me out) to what she wanted to say. We talked of her passion for dancing, and she told me about the pioneer work of Diana Watts, and how the dance might be a rite in which the body was offered in perfect condition, stretched and naked to

the sunshine. "So linked up with the brain," she cried. "All spirit, all spirit, so alive and sensitive and strong." I told her of my grandfather and of my familiar, and I read her some extracts from the packed note-books, about which she was enthusiastic. I told her of Dr. Redman, and of how angry he had made me; of my flirtation with the Church of England; and when the subject she had come to discuss with me no longer overshadowed us, she took my hand and smiled and said:

"I am so sorry I was rude to you yesterday and rough and excited."

"Oh, don't be sorry!" I exclaimed. What else could you possibly have been? Besides, all you said was true, except perhaps . I expect I was more frightened of you than anything else, not so much of you as of . . . of . . . well, my own ignorance, and the feeling that the end had come of a lovely thing." "It is the beginning, you know, really."

"What's so queer is that when I'm talking with people like Amy or Doris I feel I'm somehow a seasoned man of the world, knowing all there is to be known, with a sort of prestige in simply being a man at all. It's taken gloriously for granted that a man knows this and a man knows that what, exactly, I haven't the ghost of a notion- and one plays up to it instinctively. It's very funny. But when I'm talking with you, I feel like a child talking with its mother, quite ignorant and longing to learn, and rather naughty. Yet you're far more of a woman than all that lot. Not that I don't like Doris and Amy: I do. I'm awfully fond of them both, but

somehow they seem fantastic and unreal. You're substantial. You're real. You're solid. You're bread to a starving man. They are more like some sort of delicate puff."

I spoke with enthusiasm. Corinna laughed.

"I don't know that I like to be called anything so dull as bread."

I laughed, too, and declared that she knew what I

meant.

"What made me most angry was that I could not give you more. I might if I were different. But I'm cold and reserved. . . ."

I interrupted with a hoot at her calling herself cold. She went on: "It's no use forcing things. One can't go against one's nature, even if one isn't very pleased with one's nature. Why should I hold back when I'm so fond of you? It isn't even holding back. There's nothing to hold back. It would be unfair on you to pretend."

"Oh, don't talk about giving me more, when you have given me so much. It's my stupidity. But don't you think by the queer circumstances of our friendship by your loving me back to life in your arms as you did - we have somehow reached a stage of intimacy that few lovers reach in the usual way, that for us it would be going back? It's only this moment flashed upon me."

It's

"There's truth in that, dear; but be careful. so dangerous to .. . to speak of the usual way or to admit any scoff at the lovely facts of nature. How can I put it? Oh, I should hate you to stop. I should hate you to feel that what I give you is all a