PHBNQ^ELS Or 
 
 "rm Q1.D .WIVES' TALE ■" 
 ■HELil^- WITH THE HIGH HAND 
 WHaM aOP liAJH JOINED 
 ANNA O'F THl 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 THB BOOKO-CARLOT'-IA 
 
 buried alive 
 -the olimpse 
 
 'a great man. 
 
 r r-i'^wnD L 
 

 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE 
 
 Joseph Whitmore Barry 
 dramatic library 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 TWO FRIENDS 
 
 OF Cornell University 
 1934 
 
OATE Dli' 
 
 M^B^"^^^^ Due Back Upon 
 Recall or Leaving 
 The University 
 
 trrimauimmmmmHrnii 
 
 Cornell University Library 
 PR 6003.E59G5 
 
 The glimpse; an adventure of the soul. 
 
 3 1924 013 586 650 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013586650 
 
iE GLIMPSE 
 
BY ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 Novels 
 
 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND 
 
 THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA 
 
 BURIED ALIVE 
 
 A GREAT MAN 
 
 LEONORA 
 
 ■WHOM GOD HATH JOINED 
 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 
 ANNA OF THE FIVE TOW^NS 
 
 Smaller Books 
 
 HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A 
 
 DAY 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 LITERARY TASTE 
 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 Drama 
 
 CUPID AND COMMONSENSE 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 An Adventure of the Soul 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE OLD WIVES' TALE," 
 "THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA,"' ETC. 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK C>0(!l»f^) I- 
 
f^^cl 774- 
 
 Copyright, 1909* by 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I. — The Concert i 
 
 II. — The Public 6 
 
 III. — A Pinal Perfection lo 
 
 IV. — Bond Street 15 
 
 V. — ^Thb Malady 19 
 
 VI. — ^The Retreat 27 
 
 VII. — Birth and Death of Love ... 36 
 
 VIII.— On Inez • • ■ 53 
 
 IX. — ^The Dinner 62 
 
 X. — The Departure 73 
 
 XI. — ^The Thunderclap 87 
 
 XII. — In the Study 98 
 
 XIII. — The Doctor 112 
 
 XIV. — ^The Night 121 
 
 XV. — Toward Oblivion 128 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 XVI. — ^Awaking 134 
 
 XVII. — Sounds of Night 145 
 
 XVIII. — Marion's Thoughts 151 
 
 XIX.— A Drama 160 
 
 XX. — ^The Cost op Grief 173 
 
 XXI. — Freedom ........ 180 
 
 V 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER J PAGE 
 
 XXII.— The Woman 182 
 
 XXIII.— The Palace . 186 
 
 XXIV. — Culmination 191 
 
 XX^V. — The Death of Desire . . . .196 
 
 XXVI.— Birth 202 
 
 XXVII.— The Past 210 
 
 XXVIII.— The Glimpse 219 
 
 , XXIX. — Accident 231 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 XXX. — Return 241 
 
 XXXI. — ^The Mystery 252 
 
 XXXII. — ^The Bedside 264 
 
 XXXIII. — ^The Ceremony 273 
 
 XXXIV. — Disturbance 281 
 
 XXXV.— To THE Grave 294 
 
 XXXVI.— Marion 304 
 
 XXXVII.— Edith . ' 312 
 
 XXXVIII. — ^Johnnie's Return 330 
 
 XXXIX. — ^The Lover and the Mother . . . 339 
 
 XL. — ^The Disappearance 350 
 
 XLI. — At Dark 363 
 
 XLII. — ^The Attitude 374 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 BOOK I 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CONCERT 
 
 I PASSED from the street between two lackeys 
 who might have been the lackeys of Marie An- 
 toinette into the curtained and velvety calm of those 
 vast suites which a merchant designed in order to 
 flatter the lust of eyes like mine. Plush on the 
 wide silent floors, Indian-red tapestry on the walls, 
 and through each draped doorway confusing and 
 spacious vistas. The woodwork, the bronze fit- 
 tings, the crystal stalactites, the molded plaster — 
 all showed curious, elaborate craftsmanship. Hun- 
 dreds of artisans in soiled smocks must have la- 
 bored for months with dirty, offensive hands to pro- 
 duce that sedate splendor. But they were all gone, 
 all hurried out of sight; and of the underworld 
 only a gloved servility in immaculate hose had been 
 retained. In spite of yourself you had the illusion 
 that some powerful wand must have waved the 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 place into sudden and complete existence. A re- 
 treat for the dilettante, a refuge where he might 
 be secure from the disconcerting aggression of 
 inharmonious phenomena! A temple! 
 
 A turnstile clicked me into the central hall, under 
 whose dome the concert had been arranged. Opa- 
 line stuffs, ballooning downward from the dome, 
 changed the sunlight into silver. Hung about the 
 large room were forty paintings by Charles Con- 
 der, which I had already seen. A Conder exhibi- 
 tion had closed on the previous day. It was an 
 exquisitely luxurious idea: abasing those pictures, 
 each a marvel of intricate and lovely fancy, to be 
 the background of music. Conceive, in the ex- 
 pectant hush, the gleaming Bechstein piano with 
 its lid pointing upward, the rows of gilt chairs, 
 empty or occupied, the border of floor, and then 
 the ring of Charles Conder's women voluptuously 
 brooding in their weak but eternal beauty amidst 
 impossible landscapes of ivory, lavender, and rose. 
 
 A pianist began to play the " Miroirs " of Ravel. 
 (It was this name, on the programme of a con- 
 cert of modern French music, which had drawn me 
 from the pavement of Bond Street into the Rut- 
 land Galleries.) The first of the " mirrors " in which 
 Ravel reflected the extreme originaHty of his sen- 
 sations was called " Night Moths." Before these 
 
 2 
 
THE CONCERT 
 
 strange insects had been flitting enigmatically 
 about the room for even a couple of minutes they 
 seemed to have chosen a special victim in the per- 
 son of an old man with a small, thin face and a short 
 white beard who sat near to me. He shrugged his 
 shoulders; he emitted inarticulate scorn through 
 his nose. His resentment then forced itself into 
 words. He muttered: 
 "Morbid!" 
 
 And later, in a loud tone that attracted attention: 
 " Ridiculous! What next, I wonder! " 
 And as the night moths fluttered to rest amidst 
 timid applause, he rose as if in a paroxysm of holy 
 anger, snatched his hat from under the gilt chair, 
 and strode out, snorting protests. People turned 
 to gaze at him an instant, mildly and politely 
 shocked that a human being should exhibit so 
 much feeling about naught. But I Hked that old 
 man, and sympathized with him, because he had 
 wandered with brave curiosity into the wrong gen- 
 eration. Moreover, he had made me sure that 
 Ravel was saying something powerful and beau- 
 tiful in its originality. Only real power and beauty 
 could have so quickly flung that honest, obstinate 
 old man into the street. He would have laughed 
 easily at pretenses and held his ground. 
 
 " Mournful Birds," " A Bark on the Ocean," 
 3 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " The Valley of Bells " — these were names of 
 other of the " mirrors." What clever things might 
 be written in comparing, for instance, Ravel's birds 
 with the " plaintive warblers " of Francois Cou- 
 perin,two centuries earlier! But I amnot now com- 
 posing another musical treatise. The tragic grief 
 of the birds, the febrile and yet majestic furrowing 
 of th^t singular bark, the evasive sweetness of bells 
 in a most sinister valley — ^yes, I could describe 
 these matters; but to no end save the extension of 
 my own personality. Music cannot be said. One 
 art cannot be translated into another. All that I 
 can say is that I was aware of another step in the 
 art of music, toward the ultimate realism, the ulti- 
 mate conquest of a refractory medium. I had heard 
 music as beautiful. I had heard music which to me 
 was more beautiful. But I had never heard music 
 in which the twelve unchangeable semitones of the 
 octave — sole material of all our music — were so 
 tenderly, so harshly, so cruelly, so brilliantly teased, 
 cajoled, and whipped into the subtle curves of an 
 exceedingly complex temperament. My wonder 
 was, and the wonder of every musician would be, 
 " How did he manage to write it down? " How did 
 he express it in notes? " For it appeared to be in- 
 divisible into its constituent notes. He had car- 
 ried musical expression further than anybody had 
 
 4 
 
THE CONCERT 
 
 carried it. He had done that. Wagner, one used 
 to hear, had dealt music such a blow that she must 
 lie henceforward motionless forever. So she had 
 lain stunned until Debussy came and revived her 
 by persuading her that Wagner was a fable and 
 had never lived. Debussy had created a new beau- 
 ty, and here was Ravel, swift on his heels, creating 
 still another and a newer beauty, communicating a 
 thrill stranger than any thrill! I exulted in this 
 birth. I exulted in the acute distinction, the aris- 
 tocratic audacity, the bafifling obscurity of this ruth- 
 less and soft music. I thought how fine and glo- 
 rious it was to hear these sounds now for the first 
 time heard in London. I could have cried angrily 
 to the audience: " Shout, for the immortal spirit of 
 beauty has passed into another incarnation, and 
 you before all others in this city have witnessed 
 the advent. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PUBLIC 
 
 BUT the applause at the end of the suite of 
 pieces was even fainter than it had been after 
 the first number. The proudly demure minister 
 of beauty rose from the piano and bowed to a 
 tremulous and feeble clapping which expired at 
 once as though afraid even of itself. And the pian- 
 ist sat down quickly. I did not applaud, because I 
 never do applaud, my feelings not being readily 
 expressible in violent movements of my hands and 
 feet. Moreover, even if I had had time to decide 
 to protest by noise against the general indifiference, 
 the protest would have been worse than useless, for 
 it would have given emphasis to that awful tepidity. 
 After the lovely confusing sound of the piano, and 
 the little April shower of perfunctory clapping, - 
 there was silence. There was almost stillness. Peo- 
 ple seemed afraid even to whisper to each other lest 
 in the intimacy of the domed room everybody 
 might overhear. We sat glum and self-conscious, 
 waiting. My lips curled savagely. The public bad 
 
 6 
 
THE PUBLIC 
 
 failed again. The public had displayed again its 
 incurable qualities of dullness, unreceptiveness, sus- 
 piciousness, and fright. (And yet this was a picked 
 public, a choice handful ! No common public would 
 have put itself to the trouble of coming to listen to 
 music clearly labeled modern, by composers of 
 whom it had scarcely heard. I was indeed among 
 persons who possessed in some degree the divine 
 gift of curiosity.) Oh, the terrible unresponsive in- 
 ertia of the well-intentioned and faithful Anglo- 
 Saxon public! Oh, incomparably blind and deaf! 
 The old fight would have to begin afresh, and it 
 would have to pass through all the usual stages. 
 And then, when it was done and the vanquished 
 public was ecstatically kissing the feet of its con- 
 queror, lo ! the battle would recommence yet again. 
 My lips curled with the intensity of disgust. I pre- 
 ferred the snorting old man who would not toler- 
 ate the music at all to this prim apathy. The im- 
 mense melancholy which for a year past had been 
 creeping over me seemed suddenly to lay its heavy 
 folds closer upon me. My exultation in the genius 
 of the music remained, but it was transformed into 
 something grim and bitter. 
 
 A whispering occurred among the performers at 
 the end of the room. The concert was conducted 
 with a certain informality, and the artistes, instead 
 
 7 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 of going in and out, sat at the back, like a group of 
 priests. Evidently, now, a contretemps of some 
 kind had arisen. I saw the solo pianist sitting by 
 himself and nervously stroking his pointed French 
 beard. I got up from my chair at the end of a row 
 and went to him and bluntly asked him for the 
 name of the publisher of the music which he had 
 just played. I could easily have obtained the in- 
 formation otherwise, but perhaps my soul was forc- 
 ing me to express in some strange, abrupt, hard 
 English way my sympathy with his mission in that 
 place. 
 
 " Pardon me," he replied nervously in a low 
 tone, and with a strong foreign accent. " Have I 
 the honor of speaking to Mr. Morrice Loring? " 
 
 " Yes," I said stifHy. 
 
 He bowed. So did I. Then he picked up a 
 piece of music from the next chair, scribbled on it 
 feverishly with a fountain pen, and handed it to me 
 in a sort of religious fervor. It was the " Miroirs " 
 of Ravel, with a dedication to myself from Ravel's 
 interpreter. 
 
 " Deign to accept," he murmured. 
 
 I could not argue, for the delay in the concert, 
 whatever it was, had ended, and a young woman 
 was rising to sing. I thanked my donor as ade- 
 quately as I could in the time and circumstances, 
 
 8 
 
THE PUBLIC 
 
 and stole back to my seat. Only two years ago, 
 how such a recognition, especially from a foreigner, 
 would have touched and delighted me! Five 
 years ago I should almost have regarded it as the 
 crown of a career. But now it did not in the least 
 move me. I thought the man's eagerness rather 
 childish, rather pitiful, rather absurd. I felt that 
 his sense of values was wrong, and that he knew 
 more of the piano than of life. I did not even puz- 
 zle my head to conjecture how he had come to be 
 aware of my identity. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A FINAL PERFECTION 
 
 THE young woman was an American, adver- 
 tised as a pupil of Jean de Reszke. She 
 seemed to be a highly finished article, as she 
 stood there, expectantly smiling, with her back 
 to the piano and her arms thrust somewhat 
 behind, widely aslant, so that the curved fin- 
 gers rested on the piano. Such a pose must 
 have been carefully thought out and long prac- 
 ticed, to the least detail. Her frock and hat, her 
 gloves, the line of her neck chain, had all been the 
 subject of deep consideration. She had an agree- 
 able platform voice, mezzo-soprano, which had 
 been admirably trained and developed, and a per- 
 fect French accent. My mind, as I listened to her, 
 dwelt on the ten thousand hours during which her 
 voice must have run up and down on scales, in warm 
 months and in cold months, always the same, exas- 
 perating the neighbor in the flat above or the flat 
 below: and on the weariness of the piano and of 
 the accompanist, and on the recurrent excitation 
 
 lo 
 
A FINAL PERFECTION 
 
 of lesson days; and on the intrigues and schemes 
 for success; and on the visits to dressmakers and 
 modistes and coififeurs, and the continual pathetic 
 effort to stretch money a little further than money 
 will in fact stretch; and again on the schemes, and 
 again the schemes; and the absurd, wild hopes; and 
 the days of discouragement. In that moment she 
 was at fruition. It was to be able to stand up 
 graceful and elegant there, and pour pretty sounds 
 from the vase of her body, that she had toiled upon 
 herself, and others had toiled upon her, for a 
 decade and perhaps more. Five minutes, and she 
 had done! Interminable cultivation, endless efifort 
 for five minutes of formal display! A few vibra- 
 tions, a glance, a smile, a gesture; and she had 
 done all that she could do. Once a week, once 
 a month, possibly less often, she lived for five min- 
 utes! 
 
 And it was all useless. She sang a foolish song 
 of Gustave Charpentier's — a song born dead — and 
 she sang it sentimentally; she liked the song, bath- 
 ing in its sickly vapors. She had learned every- 
 thing that could be taught, and nothing that was 
 worth learning without the original gift which she 
 did not possess. This fruition of hers was bad; it 
 was unrighteous. Those neighbors had been exas- 
 perated for worse than naught during all those 
 
 3 II 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 long years. And she did not know; she never 
 would know. She stood there in her simple guile, 
 and in her expert accomplishment, wistfully trust- 
 ing in the efficacy of her power. In that she was 
 justified. Before the last chords of the accompani- 
 ment had been played, the audience, impatient to 
 express its delight, frothed into an elegant but sin- 
 cere applause. 
 
 " Sweet! " one heard. 
 
 And it was; too sweet. 
 
 Her eyes sparkled as she bowed. Por such in- 
 stants as this she existed. Her existence was a 
 series of ascents to, and descents from, such in- 
 stants as this. She dreamed, I knew, of more bril- 
 liant successes. But she would never have them. 
 She lacked temperament. She was merely the ac- 
 cidental possessor of a small, agreeable, highly- 
 trained mezzo-soprano voice. On a stage, in a 
 great hall, with an orchestra, she would be extin- 
 guished. 
 
 I shrank from the rest of the programme, and 
 departed, gloomy, but still grimly exultant about 
 the art of Ravel, the impression of whose music I 
 wished to preserve unmingled with any other im- 
 pressions. Already the Charpentier had contami- 
 nated it. A woman and her cavaUer left at the 
 same time, but perhaps for a different reason. She 
 
 12 
 
A FINAL PERFECTION 
 
 was young, radiant, beautiful, arrogant, and mar- 
 velously clad. She, at any rate, was under no 
 compulsion to stretch money; clearly she had com- 
 mand over a gushing source of gold. The cavalier 
 was oldish, elaborately dandiacal, with white spats, 
 a white border to the opening of his waistcoat, and 
 the false spryness of the aging beau. The woman 
 hesitated for a fraction of a second in front of a 
 Charles Conder near the door, and raised a 
 long-handled lorgnon to her black and haughty 
 eyes. 
 
 " Pretty thing ! " she observed nonchalantly, and 
 passed on. 
 
 Charles Conder had fulfilled his mission in her 
 busy, birdlike life. 
 
 As they crossed the acre of plush that separated 
 the dome from the street, they talked of a hotel at 
 Pontresina,, in their high, hard voices. At the 
 porch an automobile, glittering as though jeweled, 
 and as large as a tramcar, came up with the silence 
 of a ghost. The chauffeur, staring contemptuously 
 in front of him, ignored even this queen. A lackey 
 opened the door of the vehicle, and she stepped deli- 
 cately in, while the dandy stood bareheaded. The 
 door clicked, and again in silence the glitter- 
 ing and immense contrivance swept wondrously 
 away. The dandy replaced his hat, glanced down 
 
 13 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 to see if his necktie was behaving itself, smiled, 
 and strutted off. The lackeys resumed their im- 
 mobility. 
 
 " There, anyhow," I thought, " was the last word, 
 the final perfection, of something! " 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 BOND STREET 
 
 FLAGS were waving in Bond Street, from staffs 
 perpendicular on the roofs, and from staffs 
 horizontal on the fagades. They waved continually 
 in the sunlit breeze as though they were a natural 
 and necessary expression of the triumphant glory 
 of Bond Street, demonstrating that there was noth- 
 ing like Bond Street in the world. And probably 
 there was not. Next door to the Rutland Galleries 
 was exposed a collection of leather goods to which 
 had contributed every known quadruped with a 
 hide to his back. Gazing into those large and 
 crowded windows one was convinced that no activ- 
 ity of human existence could be correctly carried 
 on without leather mounted in silver or gold. One 
 could not mark the hour nor the day of the month, 
 nor the year, without leather; nor strike a match, 
 nor eat a sandwich on the moor, nor write a letter, 
 nor pray to God, nor use a mirror, nor gird 
 one's loins, nor identify one's dog nor one's cat nor 
 even one's self, nor smoke a cigarette, nor give a 
 
 IS 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 fiver to a lady, without this indispensable leather. 
 It was less an adaptation of leather to life than an 
 adaptation of life to leather. An astounding re- 
 lentless ingenuity had expended itself in forcing life 
 into a mold of leather, and fitting it there exactly. 
 And through the glassy portal one glimpsed vistas 
 of more leather gleaming with silver and gold, of 
 leather put to odder and still more odd uses, 
 receding inward far into the entrails of London. 
 Boots alone were missing from the menagerie; 
 doubtless an oversight, a temporary failure of the 
 creative ingenuity: A gilded legend on the win- 
 dow showed that this remarkable house had existed 
 since 1727, and that the crowned heads of Europe 
 availed thertiselves of its cleverness in order to 
 reign in leather. 
 
 The next house contradicted this one, and proved 
 that precious stones were the basis of a proper 
 conception of life, that life was impossible from 
 morn to eve without precious stones. Behind the 
 windows cave succeeded cave of precious stones 
 into the entrails of London. The second house, too, 
 had been established in the eighteenth century, and 
 it was written that the princes of the earth fur- 
 nished their diadems there. And these two houses 
 were squeezed close together, so that only a brick 
 separated lapiz-lazuli from alligators. For in Bond 
 
 16 
 
BOND STREET 
 
 Street the wealth exceeds the space. After pre- 
 cious stones came orchestras and seats for theaters 
 and operas, packed close against the stones. And 
 then cigars and cigarettes, nothing but cigars and 
 cigarettes, the largest cigars and smallest cigar- 
 ettes, the largest cigarettes and smallest cigars 
 that fancy had ever fashioned. And then suddenly, 
 without the waste of an inch, life became a range of 
 neckties, and naught in this world or the next mat- 
 tered except the color and knotting of a necktie. 
 And then, in a great building, with a mosaic pave- 
 ment in front of it, and a name over it illustrious 
 beyond the names of kings — the frock of the oda- 
 lisque, sacred, mysterious, awful, consummate, in- 
 effable: a shrine guarded by heroes wearing medals! 
 And to placate the high ministrants of the shrine 
 seemed now to be the supreme privilege of the 
 male. And then whips and spurs! And then heads 
 of hair! And then Httle cakes and sweets, a rood 
 of them vanishing dimly into the entrails of Lon- 
 don. And then engravings after Leonardo da 
 Vinci and after Mr. Arthur Hassall! And then 
 leather again! Three quarters of a serried mile up, 
 and three quarters of a serried mile down: all the 
 houses depending on each other for support, and 
 waving to each other messages of the luxury and 
 splendor of an unrivaled civilization! And equi- 
 
 17 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 pages compromising with equipages in the narrow 
 defile; and moguls, incas, pro-consuls, eunuchs, 
 usurers, sultanas, houris, mandarinesses, and seri- 
 ous ladies getting in and out of the equipages and 
 in and out of the shops, serene in the consciousness 
 that there was nothing more correct than this, and 
 that in the whole street not a single necessary of 
 life could be discovered! 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MALADY 
 
 NOR did I see any necessary of life in my slow 
 and melancholy promenade to Hyde Park 
 Corner. Into the Park I carried my causeless, my 
 improper gloom, and also my grim satisfaction in 
 the fact that Ravel had created a new beauty which 
 no neglect could wither. And I was amazed and 
 overwhelmed, as a hundred times before, by the 
 effulgent, teeming, entangled display of sensual lux- 
 ury which the Ladies' Mile presented. Welter of 
 horses' heads that a bearing rein reminded to nod 
 proudly; gloss of harness and of hide and of panels; 
 surging of pale gauzes over cushions, and over the 
 bosoms of women who reclined almost horizontally 
 indolent; flowering of monstrous hats and chro- 
 matic expansion of parasols; domination of auto- 
 mata in livery: all that jammed and huddled to- 
 gether, packed so tight that when one hoof moved 
 all must move and a pulsation at the Achilles statue 
 was felt instantly iat Albert Gate ! And the crowds 
 driving other crowds like loitering sheep in the 
 
 19 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 sidewalks, all staring and being stared at, all affect- 
 ing indifference in the affliction of self-conscious- 
 ness. And the battalions couched on multitudinous 
 chairs, staring, staring! And here and there large, 
 flat, unpopulated expanses of glowing flowers, 
 every blossom separately tended and encouraged to 
 be at once orderly and brilHant; and swards, shaved 
 and ironed every day into a fresh perfection! And 
 then the great trees, climbing powerfully upward 
 into the heights of the yellow sky, and there break- 
 ing into a rich crown of heavy, dark foliage. And 
 beyond the trees, cantering horsemen, and more 
 trees and lawns I See it all heavily and yet ardently 
 alive in a haze of dust under the implacable July 
 sun! Hear, without, the faint immense rumble of 
 London flowing on its ways, there where the houses 
 form precipices on which painters and plasterers 
 dangle ! 
 
 I saw it as imperial, as still the crest and summit 
 of empire. In spite of something called democracy, 
 and something else called finance, the ancient rul- 
 ing class of England still in the main ruled here. 
 The faces and the gestures behind those horses 
 were unmistakable and inimitable. They could not 
 be copied in a century nor in two. And they were 
 regnant. When the drawling and controlled voices 
 said, with emotion, " England," they meant them- 
 
 20 
 
THE MALADY 
 
 selves. They were the excuse for England, what 
 England had to show for itself to the planet; and 
 England was still conducted to the ends of what 
 they considered their advantage. That which had 
 always impressed me most about them and their 
 parasites, counterfeits, and dependents, was the 
 enormity of the physical apparatus with which they 
 had encumbered mere existence, the complexity of 
 it and the costHness. They were helpless without 
 slaves, and yet they had abolished slavery. There 
 were ten thousand wheels in my sight, and they all 
 had to be washed every day. And that was noth- 
 ing. There were hordes of women in my sight who 
 must stand limp every six hours while other women 
 hooked clothes round their bodies. And every soul 
 within view, even to the coachman, required for 
 every act of his life a special instrument which it- 
 self necessitated tremendous labor. The cockades 
 on shiny hats were not ready-made till they reached 
 the shop counter; and some one had put together 
 with an optic glass the delicate carriage clocks ; and 
 some one else had polished and stitched the leather 
 in which to inclose them. And what virgins, or 
 what mothers, had bent head on breast for a whole 
 day and a whole life to embroider the monograms 
 without which cambric handkerchiefs could not 
 rightly be employed! 
 
 21 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 No wonder that space was so precious in Bond 
 Street and in the slums! I saw in my mind all the 
 black-robed girls that enter Bond Street early and 
 leave it late, " assisting " all day, deep in the en- 
 trails of London, and acquiring steadily the virtues 
 of sweetness, patience, fortitude, and resignation. 
 And I saw the workshops crammed with stuffs, and 
 seamers and seamstresses, and inspectors ever aris- 
 ing and descending to insure that death was not 
 therein outrageously rampant. And I saw another 
 ring of homes, where a gross of boxes were made 
 for a farthing, and two shirts for ten farthings, and 
 where a woman might work for a hundred hours 
 and not earn enough to buy a porterhouse steak. 
 And I saw also a vast foreign army muttering every 
 language but English in the basements and attics of 
 hotels and restaurants, an army recruited from 
 mountain sides and lake shores to cook food and 
 put it into the very mouths of the oligarchy. And 
 I saw the factoried provinces, under smoke, and 
 drilled to labor more ruthlessly than if the factories 
 had been barracks. And I saw the coal mine; and 
 the bakery. And then again I saw Hyde Park. - 
 
 " How crude and facile all these contrasts and 
 juxtapositions are ! " I thought. 
 
 And they were. But they surged irrepressibly up, 
 out of my melancholy, and reacted on it, increas- 
 
 22 
 
THE MALADY 
 
 ing it. Yet I think my melancholy might have been 
 cured if I could have seen any happiness inscribed 
 on the faces that passed before me. I was ready to 
 regard suffering as a phenomenon, scientifically; 
 and I would have pardoned, would have justified, the 
 cruelty, the neghgence, the egotism of these pro- 
 cessional persons, if only they had got, value for 
 their fierce deeds, if only they had achieved some 
 sort of bliss. They had not. They had failed. They 
 were all sad. They had the sadness of brutes, who 
 know not why they are sad. All the injustice, all 
 the oppression, all the sighing of the victims, was 
 wasted. The rulers had done nothing but compli- 
 cate their lives in an endless ritual of physical gross- 
 ness, which was entirely futile. They weighed their 
 bodies on a machine every morning, and thought to 
 be happy! They were still, with the heroic ob- 
 stinacy of ignorance, searching for happiness where 
 it was impossible that happiness should be. Their 
 case was as desperate as the most desperate. 
 
 Nor was the case of the enlightened any better. 
 The faces under the Rutland dome, surrounded and 
 caressed by beauty, fine faces many of them, made 
 fine by a deliberate and long withdrawal from that 
 which is gross and unseemly, spiritualized by mys- 
 tic contacts with the immaterial — were these faces 
 less mournful? Was my own? 
 
 23 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I was forty-two years of age, and in possession 
 of what I had all my life up to about forty, instinc- 
 tively and without questioning, considered to be the 
 essentials of happiness. When yoting and harassed 
 by the gaps in my equipment and the imperfections, 
 of my technic, I used to say to myself: " If only I 
 could achieve some really large and important criti- 
 cal work, full of knowledge and also of emotion, I 
 should be content — content with the mere achieve- 
 ment." But when after ten years of devotion, I fin- 
 ished " The Development of European Music " to 
 the scale of three large volumes, and knew that it 
 was good, my satisfaction did not endure a day, not 
 an hour. I said:" This must be published. This 
 must be recognized for what it is. And I must be 
 admitted to be what I surely am. Then I shall be 
 content." And I could not find a publisher for three 
 years. But when I found a publisher — and among 
 the most august — and the work was issued, and ac- 
 cepted as a masterpiece and unique, and genuinely 
 bought and sold in addition to being discussed at 
 dinner tables, and translated into German, French, 
 Italian, and even Russian, and scarcely a day closed 
 on which I was not the subject of some truly dis- 
 tinguished flattery — ^my satisfaction did not en- 
 dure a week. And I said to myself: " Is that all? 
 Is this all it is? " And bent myself to another 
 
 24 
 
THE MALADY 
 
 work, as it were to a forlorn hope. And when my 
 half-brother died in Indianapolis, and the sudden 
 ownership of three hundred thousand dollars' 
 worth of interest-yielding valuables rescued me 
 generously and forever from the annoyances due 
 to an insufficient and unsure income, I was no 
 nearer content, though I could give myself with 
 much more completeness to the study of beauty. I 
 had the consciousness of immense and successful 
 endeavor, of being unsurpassed in my sphere; I 
 had fame; I had wealth. I had, above all, my 
 senses exquisitely trained to the perception of 
 beauty. In brief, my ambitions were realized, and 
 my desires were appeased, except the vague and 
 paramount longing, now numb, now acute, for hap- 
 piness. I perceived that I had never, no, never, 
 been happy, nor made an approach toward happi- 
 ness. I had mistaken the road to happiness. I was 
 far on the wrong path, and could not trace the 
 right one on any map. Nevertheless, my health 
 was sound, and remorse for sins was not among my 
 discomforts. 
 
 I pitied the tragic haughtiness of the human be- 
 ings in the spectacle before me, in that they sought 
 happiness on the material plane instead of the spir- 
 itual. But had I found it on the spiritual? I was 
 the saddest soul in Hyde Park; and the very cru- 
 
 25 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 dity of my revolt shocked me into a darker melan- 
 choly. I could not envisage the whole problem. 
 I knew that everything I thought in relation to 
 the problem was crude. I talked sardonically of 
 the oligarchy — and I belonged to it! The roots 
 of my daily life sprang from it. I, too, sucked the 
 blood of the humble. . . . Sell all that I had and 
 give to the poor, then? No, my crudity was not 
 so crass as that. I knew that I could only disso- 
 ciate myself from the universal crime by suicide, 
 and I had neither the wish nor the will for suicide. 
 Never had I felt the ravage of my malady so 
 keenly as on that gorgeous and spectacular after- 
 noon. And the immediate cause of the last and 
 worst crisis? Nothing but the failure of a select 
 gathering to respond, upon the instant, to the ob- 
 scure appeal of a new form and revelation of 
 beauty! From such a common disappointment I 
 had passed, by swift, illogical stages, into an 
 overwhelming sense of the universal absurd and 
 mournful futility of things, a mood against which 
 my faith in that beauty grimly battled in vain. The 
 inadequacy of the cause proved only that my mal- 
 ady was gaining on me; perhaps it was gaining 
 upon the world. And my malady was the cele- 
 brated malady of existence. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RETREAT 
 
 PALACE COURT MANSIONS: this feudal 
 name added to the monetary value of the 
 premises where I abode. It is singular how the gov- 
 erning class likes to pretend by mendacious street 
 signs that it is servile. Palace Court Mansions were 
 not within a thousand yards of a palace. Nor were 
 they mansions, but rather in design a barracks. 
 In other respects they were well enough, dignified 
 in architecture, and situate in a fine, tree-shided 
 square. Mysterious haunt — full of mysteries! In 
 the gloom of a marble entrance hall, a scornful, fat 
 janizary whose cap-touching was the merest per- 
 functory concession to our prejudices, stalked 
 about in a shining uniform. I had never seen that 
 janizary do anything but stalk about. A tiny boy, 
 dressed in a ludicrous exact imitation of the jani- 
 zary, ushered me into an electric-lighted box, and 
 the box and the boy and I shot upward with dis- 
 concerting swiftness. The boy spent all his days 
 in swiftly shooting up and down in the box: we had 
 caught him, and thus we were preparing him for 
 
 3 2.7 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the struggles and responsibilities of manhood. I 
 was thrown out of the box on to a hanging gallery 
 in front of a door numbered 45c. To me that 
 door was different from all the other doors. It was 
 sacred. It was my door. When with my key I 
 opened it, and disappeared, shutting it behind me, 
 none might follow, not even the august inhabi- 
 tants of palaces. Through that door I passed from 
 the hard, neutral, meaningless publicity of the echo- 
 ing gallery suddenly into an intimate calm seclusion, 
 where every object, every form, every color, was 
 arranged to express and extend my individuality. 
 As soon as I had closed the door I could hear the 
 soft ticking of a grandfather's clock that in the 
 square vestibule marked not time, but eternity. 
 Its rosewood matched the chairs, which, never sat 
 on, reposed in idleness on a carpet as old and dis- 
 tinguished as themselves. On three white walls of 
 the vestibule were three drawings by Henry Ospo- 
 vat. A tall, thin girl was in the act of putting a 
 brown-paper parcel on a small rosewood table that 
 stood between the two chairs. She lifted her head. 
 "Nice and cool. here, Marion," I said genially, 
 " compared to the outside ! " If my nature had not 
 been so secretive, I might have said to her, instead: 
 " Fellow-creature, what is your own personal solu- 
 tion of this last enigma? " 
 
 28 
 
THE RETREAT 
 
 She smiled primly, defensively. 
 
 " Yes, sir," in a poor little voice that indicated 
 a feeble constitution. 
 
 She wore dark spectacles over a salient nose. It 
 had been a question whether, with these disfigur- 
 ing spectacles, she could be allowed the privilege 
 of gaining a livelihood in Palace Court Mansions. 
 However, right feeling, reenforced by the difficulty 
 of replacing her, had conquered. Her face was pale 
 and her shoulders stooped. She donned blue and 
 white in the morning and black and white in 
 the afternoon, and always there was a small 
 white linen blossom in her pale hair, called 
 a cap, though it was not a cap. Once she had for- 
 gotten to crown herself with this symbol, and, per- 
 ceiving the omission in a mirror in my dining 
 room, had blushed red and ran gawkily out. This 
 was the only occasion on which I saw her under 
 the influence of deep emotion. A girl not physi- 
 cally seductive. As to the qualities of her mind, I 
 knew little. She had been living in my apart- 
 ments for months; in fact, she appeared to be al- 
 ways there, to be permanently fixed in them fifty 
 feet above the level of the earth. But I did not 
 even know whether she worshiped one god or 
 three, whether she loved or was loved, whether she 
 was in happiness or despair. I did not even know 
 
 29 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 her surname. All I knew was that she was called 
 Marion and wore spectacles, and that in a general 
 way she must not address me until I addressed her, 
 and must never contradict me, and she had a com- 
 panion more recondite than herself. A being of 
 whom I caught glimpses perhaps once a week, 
 whose aim seemed to be to recede always before 
 me. 
 
 " What is that parcel? " I asked. 
 
 Marion held it up. i 
 
 " It's just come, sir." 
 
 I guessed from the label what it was. 
 
 " Will you kindly unwrap it and put it on my 
 study table? " 
 
 " Yes, sir. There's a telephone message for 
 you, sir." 
 
 "Thanks. You might put this music on the 
 piano, will you? And take my hat." 
 
 She disburdened me and noiselessly disappeared 
 behind a curtain. I went to the telephone, behind 
 another curtain, and read in the dim light on a 
 sheet of paper which lay upon the desk: "Mrs. 
 Dean telephones from the Ladies' Athenaeum Club 
 that she will come to dinner to-night." Mrs. Dean 
 was my sister, a widow, ten years younger than 
 myself. 
 
 I instantly murmured: 
 
 30 - 
 
THE RETREAT 
 
 " Well, then, I'm damned if I don't ask Johnnie 
 to come, too 1 " 
 
 And presently, with the disc at my ear, I was 
 waiting, staring about me idly. Except for the 
 ticking of the great clock the silence was complete. 
 Above me and below me, to right and to left of me, 
 groups of lives pulsated. The waves of the im- 
 mense sea of London dashed against the walls of 
 my fortress; but within the fortress, which was also 
 a cloister, my egoism had established silence and 
 calm. 
 
 And then there was a vibration of the disc. 
 
 " Is Captain Hulse at home? I'm Morrice 
 Loring," I said to the lifeless metal before my 
 mouth, just as if I had been speaking to a human 
 being. 
 
 " Is that you, Morrice? " a small, resonant voice 
 said in my left ear, after a long pause of clock 
 ticking. It was the voice of Johnnie Hulse, trav- 
 eling to me over miles of roofs or under miles of 
 pavements, circuitously but infallibly guided. 
 
 " I say, Johnnie, where are you dining to-night? " 
 I answered. 
 
 " Nowhere. At the club. I don't know," said 
 the faint, dehumanized, uncanny whisper in my 
 ear. 
 
 " iWell, you must come here, then." 
 31 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " I don't think I'll come to-night, old man," my; 
 ear heard. 
 
 " Oh, that be hanged! You must." 
 
 " Why? " persisted the disc. 
 
 " Never mind why ! You must come. Seven- 
 thirty. Good-by." 
 
 I dropped the apparatus into its attendant claw. 
 And as the clock resumed its empire over my 
 abode, I gazed absently at the senseless telephone, 
 which at any instant might summon me to it again 
 with its peremptory ring. 
 
 In the drawing-room, Ravel's " Miroirs " were 
 already on the piano, placed there by silent, invisi- 
 ble hands ! Home of miracles ! I had only to wish, 
 and the wish was fulfilled. If I wished my dinner, 
 lo! it appeared in the dining room, various, co- 
 pious, served with the complexity and the solem- 
 nity of a mass I knew not how, by what machinery 
 and processes. And in this retreat the matter of 
 visual ofifense had never been allowed to enter. 
 Where my eye rested, there it rested on beautiful 
 things — engravings, furniture, wall papers, car- 
 pets. The view from the wide window consisted of 
 nature's elm trees, gigantic. Around me were 
 bookcases, behind whose glass the rich coloring of 
 multitudinous books of four centuries mingled with 
 reflections of objects in the room. Service, fine 
 
 32 , 
 
THE RETREAT 
 
 food, the instruments of aesthetic and intellectual 
 pleasure, satisfied ambition, the consciousness of 
 achievement, fame, health, knowledge, friends, 
 freedom, silence, calm ; neither money nor long en- 
 deavor could purchase more than I possessed of 
 the means of happiness. 
 
 I sat down, curious to decipher the first of the 
 " Miroirs." And the sound of the piano awoke th« 
 enchanted stillness of the drawing-room. But I 
 could not read that music at sight. It was music 
 that would yield to humble study but not to mas- 
 terful intentions. There is music — and great mu- 
 sic — in the execution of which the courage of the 
 soul may in some sort atone for the stiffness of the 
 fingers. But Ravel's music was not such. To yearn 
 forth hints at it was worse than useless — disastrous. 
 It demanded wrists and hands as a sine qua non. 
 And actually I fancied for a moment that if I could 
 have been a virtuoso on the piano, I should have 
 been happy! . . . 
 
 Silence fell again. I went into my study, an- 
 other large, austere, and beautiful chamber, with 
 more books, shabbier than the books in the draw- 
 ing-room, the earlier harvests of twenty years of 
 collecting. On the table were the contents of the 
 just-arrived parcel, placed there by invisible, si- 
 lent hands: "The Golden Remains of the ever- 
 
 33 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 memorable John Hales. Second edition, with addi- 
 tions, also letters and expresses concerning the 
 Synod of Dort, not before printed. London, 
 1673." Folded within the cover was a bill of fif- 
 teen and sixpence for binding it in half calf. A 
 curious quarto ! I had had it for years. I had not 
 read it; I never should read it. Yet I loved it, and 
 the thought that at last it was worthily bound af- 
 forded me distinct pleasure. I put the bill into a 
 letter basket, and, as I negligently turned over the 
 fragile yellow pages, I tried to decide in which 
 bookcase and upon which shelf a place could be 
 discovered for this treasure. 
 
 And as I pondered, there came from the next 
 room the sound of a woman singing lightly a few 
 bars of melody from Gluck's " Armida." I lis- 
 tened, startled, and scarcely aware why I was star- 
 tled. The song ceased. I opened a door in the 
 wall, and passed into the long and rather narrow 
 bedroom whose windows, giving on an inner quad- 
 rangle, were of ground glass, so that that room, 
 more completely even than the others, seemed to 
 be cut off from the world. Twin Hepplewhite ma- 
 hogany beds, covered with purple, were the prin- 
 cipal feature of it. Over a chair hung a white skirt 
 frothed with lace. On one of a pair of Regency 
 silver candlesticks which stood on a chest of draw- 
 
 34 
 
THE RETREAT 
 
 ers was perched raklshly a large yellow hat trail- 
 ing feathery plumage. A man's headgear on a can- 
 dlestick, his pantaloons cast carelessly on a chair — 
 these phenomena would fatally mar the efifect of 
 any interior; but that skirt and that hat achieved 
 the final beauty of the bedroom, at the same time 
 humanizing it. And I, who could appreciate this, 
 could yet not compass happiness! The woman 
 stood with her back to me, opposite the toilet 
 table, slim, straight, and tall. She was in under- 
 skirt and corset; the corset matched the under- 
 skirt. Her bare arms were raised above the pale 
 shoulders, the elbows pointed sharply outward, 
 and the curved fingers met over a band of hair on 
 the top of her head. In the toilet mirror I could 
 see the image of a handsome, smiHng, and slightly 
 roguish face, the face of a woman of thirty-odd 
 who has come to definite conclusions about life. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 I HAD met this lady for the first time — ^that is 
 to say, I had effectively met her for the first 
 time — ten years before in the Rue Montagne de 
 la Cour, Brussels. She was sitting in an open 
 carriage behind a pair of horses and a coachman. 
 It was a bright, cool, and windy day after Easter. 
 The vehicle stood outside one of the numerous jew- 
 elers' shops in the narrow and steep street of lux- 
 uries. I on the busy pavement, and she leaning 
 over with a certain quality of eagerness — we 
 talked for a few moments about the concert at 
 which we had been formally presented to each 
 other a few weeks earlier. I told her that I had 
 really been wanting to meet her again. And she 
 said: "And do you suppose I haven't been want- 
 ing to meet you again? " She said with intense 
 conviction in her eyes that my musical criticism 
 was infinitely superior to any other in London or 
 elsewhere, that it had always fascinated her, and 
 that she had been wondering whether we ever 
 
 36 
 
BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 should meet again so that she might hear me talk 
 about music. I saw myself through the eyes of 
 that young creature. Her eyes, her lips, her smile 
 were all inviting me as she leaned over the side of 
 the carriage. And her bearing was so candid, so 
 ingenuous! She was fair, pretty, slim, elegant, 
 intelligent, enthusiastic. We were in a foreign city. 
 The encounter had romance in it, had in it some- 
 thing which transcended ordinary agreeable ex- 
 perience. In a pause she warned me that I was 
 not to imagine that the carriage was hers. And 
 she explained that she was in Brussels as the guest 
 of a middle-aged couple whose daughter had been 
 a fellow-student of hers at the Royal College of 
 Music, and that her hosts, who treated her with in- 
 credible kindness and generosity, were at the mo- 
 ment in the jeweler's shop. It seemed that they 
 had carried her of? from London by mere force. 
 Unfortunately, they were not a bit interested in mu- 
 sic; they were, however, nice, homely people, with 
 plenty of money and a capacity for enjoying them- 
 selves. Whereupon I remarked that I assumed 
 they could not, then, be specially excited about 
 the Gluck Festival performances at the Brussels 
 Opera, which I had been sent from London to criti- 
 cise. She had only the vaguest idea of the Gluck 
 performances, the modest posters of the Theatre 
 
 37 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 de la Monnaie not having arrested her eyes. 
 Besides, as she said, while with her friends she had 
 to cease to think about music. But as I talked, her 
 interest in Gluck became feverish. " Wouldn't you 
 like to hear ' Armida ' to-night? " I asked her. 
 And she answered with an afifii-mative that was pas- 
 sionate. " Well," I said, " will you come with 
 me? I'm here for two papers and I shall have two 
 seats." She said: " Not really? " Her eyes danced. 
 I asked her if she thought her friends would be 
 shocked if I invited her to dine with me before 
 the performance. And she replied: " Of course 
 not! They're American, you know. They'll only 
 be too glad for me to enjoy myself." I said: 
 "Then, will you?" And I stared hard at her. She 
 faintly blushed. Then her friends came bustling 
 and talkative out of the shop, bowed forth by a 
 little shopman, who responded to their broad 
 American in Belgian English. I was introduced, 
 and had the happy idea of mentioning my half- 
 brother in Indianapolis. She had been right. They 
 were quite delighted at the prospect of an even- 
 ing's special enjoyment for their guest. 
 
 I spent an afternoon of wearing anticipation, 
 nervous expectancy; one of those afternoons when 
 the fingers of clocks and watches will not move. 
 Partly to pass the time, and partly because the idea 
 
 38 
 
BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 of work in the evening while she was with me was 
 intolerable and even inconceivable, I prepared in 
 advance as well as I could my telegram to my daily 
 paper. I can say that I have known the torturing 
 fever of a grand passion, and it was on that day 
 that I was first seized. 
 
 We djned at the little Etoile, then as now the 
 best restaurant in Europe. She was in black crepe, 
 decollete; a large artificial rose in her hair. Ver- 
 mihon lips; rather thin, but truly vermiHon! 
 Twitching nostrils ! Humid, glinting eyes ! On her 
 bosom rose and fell a blazing diamond cross, a gift 
 from those impulsive Americans; they had been 
 buying it that morning; hence it was that they had 
 suggested her remaining alone in the carriage. The 
 foot of the cross was nearly hidden behind the top 
 of her dress. The great line of Swinburne sprang 
 into my mind. Ah, deep division of prodigious 
 breasts! She dropped her wrap behind her on the 
 old-fashioned velvet seat, exposing her shoulders, 
 bravely naked. And she straightened her shoul- 
 ders with a proud gesture, as if saying: " I am the 
 desire of the world." And at the same time her 
 eyes were surrendering to me. They said: " See 
 how I trust myself to you. Fragile, I am abso- 
 lutely in your masculine power, and you are capa- 
 ble of being brutal. I hke my peril." She gave 
 
 39 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 herself a delicious little shake as I poured out the 
 wine. Filling of a glass — sacred and symbolic act, 
 beautiful in itself, and how exciting! I can feel 
 again the fine thinness of the crystal, the delicacy 
 of the china, the heat of the restaurant, and 
 the flattering, curious gaze of other diners con- 
 tinually on me and my conquest in the small 
 room. 
 
 " What a chance! " I thought. " If I had hap- 
 pened to take a different street, this stupendous 
 miracle, this splendid and terrifying enchantment, 
 would never have been ! " The conception of the 
 hazards of life made me sick, with a kind of retro- 
 spective apprehension. 
 
 We could not loiter over the dinner. Nor did 
 we wish to do so, for we were burning for the 
 opera, for the agitation of music. " It's a fine 
 night," I said. " Shall we'walk to the theater? It's 
 close by." In those days and for years afterwards, I 
 had to count every shilling. " Oh, I should love to 
 walk! " she exclaimed with eager assent. And she 
 confided herself to me for the passage of the dim 
 streets. I had the illusion of owning her; she 
 walked close, close by me. And in the theater 
 she blossomed anew, and more magically. The 
 audience was what is called "brilliant," and for 
 Brussels it was extraordinarily brilliant. The 
 
 40 
 
BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 Gluck Festival had the nature of a solemnity. It 
 was patronized by the press of Europe, and by 
 princes. The autocrat of Carlsruhe was conduct- 
 ing, and the operatic stars of Paris, Berlin, and 
 Munich had consented, in homage to Gluck, to 
 suffer the autocrat's tyranny for a week. In the 
 confusion, Leopold, enthroned in the royal box, 
 obviously took himself for an enlightened patron 
 of the arts and the sole restorer of Gluck's glory. 
 " I hadn't a notion it would be like this! " she mur- 
 mured, glancing round about at the brilliance. 
 Her vitality seemed to increase even more, and she 
 gave that Httle thrill of the shoulders. What 
 chiefly impressed me was the intensity of her appe- 
 tite for pleasure. She bathed in it voluptuously. 
 And the candor of her joy was childlike. I said to 
 myself, " Why not? " All the evening we were 
 close together. Her responsiveness, her receptive- 
 ness, her pliancy were astounding. On every ar- 
 tistic point she not only tried to agree with me; 
 she not only persuaded herself that she agreed with 
 me; she did actually and genuinely agree with me. 
 She thought and felt through me, by me. She 
 reflected me more quickly than a mirror. She 
 drank me up. She became me. It was a tremen- 
 dous, an overwhelming experience. And beneath 
 the vivid music and the spectacle and the cluster- 
 
 41 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ing radiance of chandeliers, beneath the pungent 
 brilliance of the crowd, beneath our excited talk 
 of music and our careful manners to each other — 
 my deference and her delicacy^-beneath all this 
 froth rolled the deep rivers of our desire, silent but 
 ruthless. Not art, not spirit, not intellect, but our 
 bodies were the fundamental and grave fact. Not 
 our mouths but our eyes, contradicting our 
 mouths, said the true, paramount things. Her 
 fine, courageous sensuality (conveyed who could 
 explain how?) inspired me with an exultant respect 
 for her and for that of which we always endeavor 
 to be ashamed. It eflfected for me a transmutation 
 of all values. My intellect stood still in awe, as be- 
 fore a terrific revelation. 
 
 During the last entr'acte I had to cross the 
 square to the telegraph ofifice. She asked appeal- 
 ingly if she might not go with me. Going to the 
 telegraph office, to help to dispatch a press tele- 
 gram, had for her the quality of an adventure. So 
 we went together. And she stood exquisitely out 
 of place, fragile, defenseless, and daring, with 
 parted smiling lips, near the grille, while I per- 
 formed a brief but astonishing feat of concentra- 
 tion in the high-roofed, echoing, dim-lit bureau. 
 This memory of the night is as bright as any I 
 have. 
 
 42 
 
BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 About midnight we were clattering in a closed 
 fiacre up the hill to the Hotel Bellevue. We had 
 little speech, but I asked her what she meant to 
 do on the morrow, and she said that she really must 
 go to the cathedral. The rendezvous was arranged 
 at once, and quite simply. As the horse walked 
 doggedly up the last bit of steep into the Place, 
 I said to her with an assumption of negligence that 
 I didn't even know what her Christian name was. 
 " My proper name is Iris," she said. " But I hate 
 it. I always call myself Inez, and so do my 
 friends." 
 
 Inez! 
 
 It was one of those felicities that women have 
 sometimes. 
 
 After I had left her, with the correct ceremo- 
 nies, in the portico of the hotel, I stood still, liter- 
 ally amazed, in the middle of the lofty avenue, 
 where the electric cars were still gliding in clangor 
 and light. I thought of how near she had been to 
 me in the fiacre. " This is the most marvelous 
 thing that ever happened," I muttered to myself, 
 rapt, absorbed in an ecstatic conviction of the mar- 
 vel. I wanted intensely to rush into the hotel and 
 drag her out from its protection. But I had ir- 
 revocably lost her till the morrow. I kept saying 
 •to myself: " Why! She's absolutely wonderful, and 
 4 43 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I could simply do what I like with her! I could 
 simply do what I like with her! " 
 
 I passed a horrible night of longing for the fu- 
 ture, of fear for the future. I neither slept nor 
 tried to sleep. The next morning I saw her in the 
 twilit and pompous immensity of the cathedral. 
 She was more Inez than ever, and more mine than 
 ever. No concealment in those eyes. In crossing 
 the nave she bowed to the great altar. This startled 
 me. I asked her with due gravity of tone if she 
 was a Roman Catholic. She whispered: " No, but 
 I often feel I should like to be. My friends here 
 are." Her eyes were moist, and she looked at me 
 with a gaze in which desire and devotion dignified 
 each other. I was excruciatingly conscious of the 
 charm of her mortal frame, of her yielding femin- 
 inity, as we stood in the dark vista of the aisle. 
 
 Then six days of torture, six days of fevered idle- 
 ness, succeeded before I could see her again. I 
 saw her next in London, at her rooms in Claren- 
 don Road, off Holland Park Avenue. It was 
 night. Her little drawing-room was agreeably ar- 
 ranged as a frame for her. Its chief article of fur- 
 niture was a grand piano. She gave lessons on the 
 piano. She read for me music which I had 
 brought, and showed a highly unusual facility. 
 And her intelligence was extraordinarily alert and 
 
 44 
 
BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 receptive. It was admitted and agreed between us 
 then that we were indispensable to each other. 
 Words were exchanged, but they were few and un- 
 necessary. The fact that we were indispensable to 
 each other was too glaringly patent to need articu- 
 late statement. I kissed her. I held her. We were 
 solitary and secure in the tiny flat, under the 
 shaded lamp, and she the image of modest acquies- 
 cence. And my unconquerable conventional pride 
 surged up and took control of me. " No! " it said. 
 " You aren't going to have any complications in 
 your life; you aren't going to be at the mercy of 
 accidents; you aren't going to do anything silly." 
 I left her immaculate. The next morning I was 
 at the office of the registrar of marriages. " She is 
 everything that one could want in a woman!" I 
 reflected, dazed by the very stroke of my luck. But 
 if she had had nothing desirable but that which the 
 eye can see, I should still have been at the office of 
 the registrar of marriages. Her gifts made no real 
 difference. She had to be mine, at any price. I 
 suggested that the marriage should be kept strictly 
 secret till June, and that in June our friends should 
 be allowed to suppose that it had but just occurred, 
 so that we might be spared the tedium of friendly 
 remarks upon our precipitancy, and so that our 
 characters for prudence might remain intact. She 
 
 45 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 was delighted with the scheme. After three weeks, 
 of which I counted every interminable hour, we 
 duly figured before the registrar. And she was 
 mine, surreptitiously, furtively, with exciting, ex- 
 quisite accompaniments of stealth and chicane; but 
 lawfully. And I 'drew a long breath and expected 
 to be happy. 
 
 Yes, it was a grand passion on both sides, and 
 for sometime it enthralled us. The girl in Inez 
 became the woman under my eyes. She had in- 
 deed the physical courage of her love; and nothing 
 in my life has ever more enchantingly impressed 
 me than the timid, silent spontaneities by which in 
 the first days she expressed this courage. I was 
 not happy, I was merely absorbed. There were 
 two obstacles to my happiness. One was that my 
 work was summoning me. I do not mean the 
 journalism by which I gained a livelihood, but the 
 major enterprise by which I intended to live. The 
 summons was insistent. The other was that I could 
 not, from lack of means, put Inez into the rich 
 frame which her instincts and individuality de- 
 manded. We set up housekeeping with my furni- 
 ture and hers, and hope. From the circumstances 
 in which I had first met her, and from the atmos- 
 phere of luxury which she seemed to emanate, I 
 had thought that she must have some regular re- 
 
 46 
 
BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 sources. But it was not so. Her existence could 
 only have been a series of shifts, fortunate escapes, 
 and feats of equipoise. Often she must have sus- 
 tained life and brilliant appearances on a few shill- 
 ings: she depended on the fees of pupils. Upon 
 the disclosure of our marriage two vague negli- 
 gible brothers showed themselves momentarily and 
 vanished; that was all. The financial structure of 
 her daily life seemed to crumble into dust at a 
 man's touch. I had no grievance whatever, but 
 such things are curious enough to mention. I 
 could support my wife. Support, however, was 
 not adequate to the situation. The perception of 
 my concealed unhappiness induced unhappiness in 
 her, which she also concealed ineffectually. What 
 she felt keenliest was the constant tugging of my 
 work against the cords that held me to her. She 
 could see the cords stretching. The grand pas- 
 sion continued, still omnipotent, an ever-renewed 
 source of Lethean rapture, an eternal refuge of 
 bliss from the world's dailiness and from conscience 
 and right judgment. It seemed as if nothing could 
 impair its sovereign spell. Yet each day it aged, 
 if imperceptibly. 
 
 Inez abandoned the effort to conserve a clien- 
 tele of pupils, and determined to practice with a 
 view to public appearance as a pianist. I knew the 
 
 47 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 scheme was hopeless; more than extreme facility 
 and a receptive temperament is needful in these 
 days to success in solo execution. She, too, some- 
 where within herself, knew that it was hopeless. 
 The violence of her appetite for pleasure drove her 
 to a desperate course that could only end in disillu- 
 sion. But I had to pretend to admire the archi- 
 tecture of her castle in the air. I took advantage 
 of her new habit of industry to resunre seriously 
 my own work, and I never again loosed it. Sud- 
 denly the practicing ceased. No explanation, no 
 comment; it ceased! Then Inez became a Roman 
 Catholic: which is equivalent to saying that she 
 became an ardent Roman Cathohc. My attitude 
 in this picturesque affair was one of benevolently 
 amused neutrality. One Sunday evening I walked 
 into Brompton Oratory with her. In the theatri- 
 cally contrived gloom of the great interior, dim 
 figures knelt before the altars. I was taken aback 
 by the violence with which she threw herself down 
 in front of a row of candles, and, hands feverishly 
 clasped, poured out an invocation. I was taken 
 aback, and I was put out of countenance. We 
 emerged in silence. Yet the physical courage of 
 her passion showed no change. The religiosity 
 was only another instinctive effort to gratify in- 
 expensively her appetite for spectacular pleasure 
 
 48 
 
BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 — the appetite which I could not gratify. I de- 
 spised her now. I did not hide from myself that 
 on several counts I despised her. For her recep- 
 tiveness, her lack of original force, her imitative- 
 ness! For her fierce love of pleasure! For her 
 frank worship of popular success! This love and 
 this worship were implicit in her conversation. 
 (She did not give hints; she was more subtle than 
 that.) Whereas my conversation impHed that the 
 love of spectacular pleasure was barbaric, and that 
 popular success could have none but a disquieting 
 significance for the philosopher, and that efifort and 
 self-approval were the sole basis of genuine con- 
 tent. I used always to say that good work was 
 good, and could not be improved by acclamations. 
 She would agree that my work was good, and my 
 ambition heroic. She would agree to everything. 
 But when she heard or read of resplendent suc- 
 cess, and of glittering existences made possible by 
 the wealth that success had gained — then with a 
 single gesture, a single intonation, she would di- 
 vulge her heart's secret. 
 
 And I despised her the more because her in- 
 stincts were in accord with my own, which warred 
 against my reason. I, too, wanted success! I, too, 
 wanted the appreciation of the mob! I, too, wanted 
 spectacular pleasure! But I would not admit it. 
 
 49 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I was too proud to admit that my desires outran 
 my possessions. It was her frank admissions that 
 irritated me. She, with her beauty and her imper- 
 ishable gracefulness, was the voice of my under- 
 self. We were straitened; but we had food, clothes, 
 books, a roof, some friends, and ample means of 
 private aesthetic enjoyment. We did not look poor. 
 The rigor of my blue suits and black neckties never 
 fell short of masculine elegance. Her simple 
 clothes always achieved distinction. Appearances 
 were preserved. Our dignity was kept. Was not 
 this enough? "No! No! and No!" her desires 
 seemed soundlessly to shriek. 
 
 One evening, when I was engaged in Fleet 
 Street, she went into the gallery at Covent Gar- 
 den after standing three hours in the queue for the 
 chance of a seat. And she reached home a few 
 minutes after me, draggled, wet. I was angry. 
 My dignity was affronted. I nearly lost my tem- 
 per — a mishap that I had avoided ever since an 
 explosion at the age of eighteen had made me ill 
 for a week. I saved myself by sarcasm. My wife 
 waiting at gallery doors for hours with the half- 
 crown mob! My wife trailing in and out of om- 
 nibuses in midnight rain! Had she no more self- 
 respect, no more regard for the external form of 
 life? Ar(d all the time it was myself I was upbraid- 
 
 50 
 
BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 ing. She was angry, viciously aijgry. " When 
 you can afford to offer me a stall and a hansom 
 you may begin to talk — and I'll thank you not to 
 begin before!" she said, and added something in 
 the nature of an anticlimax to the effect that she 
 did not thank me for an occasional press ticket that 
 nobody else wanted. And she retired to bed. The 
 scene was a profound humiliation, for both of us. 
 The effect of it seemed to pass, of course. But in 
 six months after that the grand passion was dead. 
 Of the immense and fierce conflagration nothing 
 remained but the black damage. The scene had 
 not been a cause of the passion's death — merely a 
 symptom that it was dying. Five years the grand 
 passion had lived. A great age! Three is the nor- 
 mal limit. We existed together, indifferent; which, 
 on reflection, seemed as miraculous as our mutual 
 attraction once had been. Existence would have 
 degenerated into an unseemly altercation had not 
 my intense regard for my dignity and hers continu- 
 ally animated me to the effort of tact and restraint 
 necessary to keep it at a higher level. The ever- 
 renewed effort was fatiguing me into despair when 
 two events — ^first the reception given to my book 
 and then the inheritance of my half-brother's riches 
 — conspired to rescue us. A sheer hazard! But we 
 were saved. 
 
 51 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Inez bore the blow very well ; and it is not every- 
 body who can survive with credit the shock of 
 great good fortune. Some shine in adversity, 
 some in prosperity; Inez belonged to the latter 
 class. Although I secretly condescended to her 
 again because she found her happiness so easily 
 amidst mere symbols without worth, still I admired 
 her for her deportment. She was neither maladroit 
 nor consequential; nor was she extravagant. With 
 the calm mastery of a duck to water she took to 
 the income which was now at her disposal, and to 
 the situation of being the wife of a man who had 
 won renown among the disdainers of the multi- 
 tude. Also, we were both diverted by the amusing 
 process of changing our environment. Her taste 
 in the creation of an interior was quite as fastidious 
 as my own, and in some respects more sure. 
 
 Another detail. Less than a year ago, despite 
 an uncommonly powerful physique and constitu- 
 tion, I had been overthrown by a serious attack of 
 rheumatic fever. Her direction of my nursing was 
 admirable, and irreproachable her demeanor to 
 myself, especially during my petulant convalescence 
 when I defied doctors and devils to keep me in bed. 
 Throughout that illness the daily vision of her 
 grace — albeit a grace which never melted into im- 
 pulsive tenderness — had alleviated my affliction. 
 
 52 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 ON INEZ 
 
 INEZ turned round from the glass and faced me, 
 dropping her long, bare arms. 
 
 " Well," she said abruptly, " what do you think 
 of it?" 
 
 And she stood quite still, as if under inspection. 
 
 "Think of what?" I asked. 
 
 " My new coiffure," she answered. 
 
 Her eyes gleamed; her body seemed to quiver 
 with abundant life. 
 
 "Let me see now," I said, and sat down, con- 
 scious suddenly of fatigue, on the soft, yielding bed. 
 I put my hands into my pockets and stretched out 
 my legs, and gazed at that splendid hair. " Saucy ! " 
 I murmured judicially, and repeated, with ap- 
 proval, " Decidedly saucy ! " 
 
 " I should say so ! " she remarked, content. Be- 
 neath the demureness, the sobriety, the self-watch- 
 fulness of the woman who cuts an important figure 
 in the world, there peeped out for an instant the 
 malapert, the delicious impudence of the universal 
 
 S3 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 feminine satisfied with itself. Not a wink ; less than 
 a wink ; a quiver across the eyelids ! 
 
 In her short skirt she tripped primly to a ward- 
 , robe, and opened it and drew forth a tea gown in 
 two shades of pale green. She held it up thought- 
 fully. 
 
 " I shall wear this to-night," she said. " Mary 
 won't mind. You've seen her telephone message? " 
 
 " Yes," I said. " And I've telephoned to Johnnie 
 to come and dine, too." 
 
 "Captain Hulse! Why?" 
 
 Her voice was never more beautiful than when, 
 startled, she raised it slightly. 
 
 " No particular reason," I said, " I just thought 
 we might as well give that affair every chance." 
 
 She lifted her chin. 
 
 " And did he say he would come ? " 
 
 " Of course," I answered. 
 
 She stood hesitant, with the imponderable robe in 
 her right hand, staring at it absently. 
 
 " Oh ! Well, he won't mind either ! " she said, 
 coming to a decision; and she slipped on the robe, 
 and shook it downward toward her feet with a 
 curious motion of the whole frame. 
 
 " There's no ' of course ' about it," she continued, 
 closing the wardrobe and examining herself in its 
 glazed doors. " They had lunch together to-day." 
 
 54 
 
ON INEZ 
 
 "Who did?" 
 
 " Mary and Captain Hulse." 
 
 " The devil they did ! " I exclaimed, charmed and 
 astonished. " Who told you ? " 
 
 " Captain Hulse told me." 
 
 " You've seen him this afternoon ? Where ? " 
 
 " I met him in Dover Street," she replied quietly, 
 twisting her neck so as to glimpse, from under down- 
 cast lids, the back of the robe in the glass. " It 
 seems Mary came up to town this morning for the 
 day." 
 
 " Arranged beforehand, then ? " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " The lunch." 
 
 " I don't know," said Inez, with an inflection 
 playfully malicious ; as if she had said : " Don't ask 
 me what goes on between your correct sister and 
 Captain Hulse ! " 
 
 " Anyhow," I said, " he'll meet her at two meals 
 in the same day, instead of one ; that's all. It'll be 
 a surprise for him-^— and for her." 
 
 " You didn't tell him she was coming, then? " 
 
 " Not exactly." I laughed. 
 
 " Morrice ! " said the singular, the ever-enigmatic ' 
 Inez. " What's the matter with you to-day? " She 
 said it kindly, half maternally. 
 
 I grinned, and mischievously curled my lips. As- 
 55 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 suredly neither she nor anyone could have guessed 
 that I was incurably unhappy and desolate, and that 
 all this amused and naughty interfering interest 
 which I displayed in a matter that did not concern 
 me was no more an expression of my soul than foam 
 is an expression of the mystery of the sea's dark 
 bed. How deep life lies ! 
 
 " I heard a fine thing this afternoon," I said, and 
 told her about the concert and Ravel's " Miroirs." 
 
 " So that's it, is it ? " she remarked. " You're 
 always like that when you've heard something 
 good." 
 
 "Like what?" 
 
 " Larkish," she said after a pause. 
 
 " Oh, indeed ! " I rejoined grimly. But whether 
 she was stating a profound truth generalized from 
 a long series of careful observations, or whether she 
 was saying merely the first thing that came into her 
 head, I knew not. One never does know, in these 
 cases. 
 
 " Was that Ravel that you were trying to play 
 just now?" she inquired. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " My poor boy! " She raised her eyebrows, as if 
 it were in compassion at my horrible failure. 
 
 " Simply unplayable at sight! " I excused myself. 
 
 " My poor boy ! " she said again. 
 56 
 
ON INEZ 
 
 " Well," I said, " you try yourself, and you'll 
 see." 
 
 " Oh ! " she lightly exclaimed. " I don't pretend 
 to play, now." 
 
 " You shall wrestle with Ravel to-night, at any 
 rate," I said. " We'll watch your struggles, Mrs. 
 Conceit." 
 
 Instead of replying she looked at me fixedly. 
 
 " And what have you been doing since the con- 
 cert?" she asked. 
 
 " Nothing," I said. " I strolled feebly home 
 through the Park." 
 
 "Where did you have tea?" 
 
 " Haven't had any," I admitted. " Never once 
 thought of it ! Anyway, it's too late now." 
 
 " Morrice ! " she protested. " And look how hot 
 it is! You know how you are when you get too 
 thirsty. You'll eat nothing. Do you mean to say 
 you aren't thirsty ? " 
 
 " I won't swear I'm not." 
 
 She tapped her gilded foot. " You must have 
 something to drink." Then she rang the bell. The 
 spectacled girl responded. 
 
 " Marion," she saiji coldly, " mix a lemon squash 
 and put it in the study — ^at once." 
 
 " Yes'm." 
 
 " And, Marion ! " She held the girl as by an in- 
 57 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 visible chain while she turned to me : " Have you 
 told them that Captain Hulse is coming to dinner ? " 
 
 "No," I said guiltily. 
 
 " But, my poor boy, how do you expect them 
 to know ? " Then to Marion : " Captain Hulse is 
 coming to dinner, as well as Mrs. Dean." 
 
 " Thank you, m'm." 
 
 The door was silently shut. 
 
 Very soon we heard discreet noises in the adjoin- 
 ing study. 
 
 " Now go and have your lemon squash," said 
 Inez gravely. " And whatever you do, don't drink 
 too quickly." 
 
 As I sat obediently drinking, surrounded by my 
 books, I could hear her quick, smooth movements 
 in the bedroom — the rustle of stuffs, a few foot- 
 steps, a murmured exclamation, the tinkle of jewel- 
 ry. I felt dimly that I had enjoyed that conver- 
 sation. Mysterious Inez ! She was young yet. She 
 exulted in the force of her vitality and in the power 
 of her charm. She was happy. She had within her 
 a secret and inexhaustible sense of happiness. She 
 was without ambition. Her ambition had been ful- 
 filled and was dead. She knew no divine discontent. 
 She lived from hour to hour, in and for the hour. 
 She did not live in the future. Each hour was an end 
 in itself. She never yearned for the other side of 
 
 58 
 
ON INEZ 
 
 the hill, beyond the sunset. She culled the flowers 
 in her path. And in my unfathomable desolation, 
 which surged over me again as I dreamed alone in 
 my lair, I asked myself : " But is not this the true 
 art of life that she practices? Have I not always 
 been preparing to live, and never living? I may 
 have found knowledge, but it is she who has found 
 wisdom. She is wise enough to live. I am not." 
 
 She had no eyesight for the inconvenient un- 
 pleasant imperfections that mar the earth. She saw 
 what she wished to see, and no more. And I asked 
 myself : " But is not this also the true art of life ? 
 And if she goes to one extreme, do I not go to the 
 other? After all, one must select one's facts. One 
 cannot see everything. One cannot take the whole 
 world on one's shoulders." 
 
 A door clicked gently. She had left the bed- 
 room, quietly, elegantly, with those movements of 
 hers that never jarred. . . . 
 
 Shallow? BirdHke? Yes, perhaps! But how 
 mysterious! And how graceful ! The infallible firm 
 grace of her gestures could not but be the expression 
 of something distinguished in her soul. This 
 thought intensified my sadness almost intolerably: 
 that once the sight of her could throw me into a 
 fever, and that now I could behold her unmoved. 
 Gone, that spell ! . . . Was I not unjust to her in 
 5 59 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 crediting her with happiness? Something was ir- 
 revocably dead in her, too. Could it be naught to 
 her that now I beheld her unmoved, and she me? I 
 felt as, sorry for her as for myself. I went back 
 through the sad, exquisite, violent hours of our long 
 passion. We were close linked, indeed, by the past, 
 by all those days and all those nights. We had 
 lived, together. And now we inhabited the same 
 flat, satisfying our tepid desires with the sane and 
 perfunctory nonchalance of animals. Could she be 
 really happy ? Or was her demeanor only a splendid 
 proud pretense? 
 
 The piano sounded. She was in the drawing- 
 room, and attacking the " Night Moths " of Ravel, 
 at sight. It was a brilliant, audacious effort; a su- 
 preme effort to show me of what she was capable 
 when she tried. I thought : " By God ! she may 
 be shallow, but she's infernally clever. How many 
 women, or men, are there in London who could do 
 that?" 
 
 In that moment I was conscious, or deemed that 
 I was conscious, of the first flicker of a new longing 
 for her. Through her I seemed to perceive an escape 
 from my desolation; a cure for my malady, or at 
 least a relief from it. I saw hope. I thought: 
 " Surely one can rebuild, knowingly ! Artifi- 
 cial ! . . . But who shall say what is artificial and 
 
 60 
 
ON INEZ 
 
 what real ? I must teach myself to forget the future 
 in the present, and the world in her." . . . And I 
 saw her as an incomparable instrument and aid to 
 philosophic living, an instrument that had lain idle. 
 " Oh, yes ! " I said to myself — I nearly said it aloud, 
 " I must try this, seriously. I must learn to live." 
 I was quite excited, and in my excitement I had the 
 illusion of forgetting my desolation. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE DINNER 
 
 I WAS late for dinner. Inez raised her finger at 
 me, good-humoredly reproachful. Hulse was 
 on the hearth rug, talking as usual. My sister 
 Mary, at ease on a sofa, was listening to him, in- 
 tently, with a faint malicious smile. Few disturb- 
 ing phenomena could interrupt Hulse when his 
 lips had been fairly unsealed; and certainly the ar- 
 rival in the drawing-room of a host was not among 
 them. He shook my hand absently but power- 
 fully, without a pause in his speech. Mary and I 
 kissed with the nonchalance of brother and sister. 
 
 " I was pretty late," she whispered, under the 
 loud cadences of Hulse. " But I'm not so bad as 
 you." 
 
 " Come along," said Inez. 
 
 We went into the dining room, and sat down, 
 and Marion, the spectacled girl, who was petrified 
 in a corner like a statue of some realistic decadence, 
 received the magic gift of life, and began the relig- 
 ious service of the dinner; and Hulse still elo- 
 
 62 
 
THE DINNER 
 
 quently flowed on, in what I perceived to be a 
 description of a collision between suffragettes and 
 policemen which he had himself witnessed at St. 
 Stephen's late that afternoon, 
 
 " Their faces were covered with sweat," he said. 
 " Their whole bodies must have been in a sweat." 
 
 Another man would have said " perspiration," es- 
 pecially in presence of a woman Hke Mary; but 
 not the unsparing Johnnie Hulse. All his existence 
 seemed to be a challenge to the world. He was one 
 of those whose chief characteristic is that they don't 
 care what happens next, one of those who are rich 
 enough to pay any price for candor. He went about 
 saying the things he thought, in his loud, rich, ora- 
 tor's voice. I had met him a couple of years before 
 at the Savile Club, from which he had subsequently 
 withdrawn, saying savagely that its manners were 
 too demure, and that it was the last and worst 
 stronghold of British hypocrisy.- He never tired of 
 teasing me, who remained a faithful member, by 
 calling it the Mincing Club. He was the most vio- 
 lent and the most persuasive man that I have perhaps 
 ever known. By profession, he painted in oils. He 
 was a pillar of the New English Art Club. His 
 pictures were small and rare and tremendously de- 
 fiant. A few were magnificent. I had one that was 
 a masterpiece. " I think that will give you pleas- 
 
 63 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ure," he said to me when I bought it from him. 
 It did. Whenever Johnnie Hulse outraged me I 
 used to look at that picture and say to myself, nod- 
 ding my head : " But he can paint — I'm damned if 
 he can't ! " I was one of the few that did buy a 
 picture from him occasionally. The press and the 
 public honestly thought his work too obstreperously 
 absurd for even a moment's consideration. " The 
 worst eccentricities of the French school of Inde- 
 pendents," said one organ. " It would be revolting 
 were it not comic," said another. And another said 
 not a word, doubtless hoping the more effectually 
 to snub the fellow by this august and complete 
 silence. Of course he had lived too long in Paris. 
 He spoke French too well. These things put Eng- 
 land against him. And he was always against 
 England. " It's an impossible country for an artist," 
 he would roll out. " Im-poss-i-ble ! And I'm al- 
 ways coming back to it." 
 
 He had no private means, and he would remark 
 that' in a good year he made enough out of painting 
 to pay for his rose madder. Yet he continually 
 spent large sums of money. He was a bachelor, 
 with the most expensive of all hobbies: women. 
 Now, at the age of forty, possibly the ardor of that 
 hobby had somewhat cooled. In the matter of 
 women, his taste was as wide as humanity; it in- 
 
 64 
 
THE DINNER 
 
 eluded the very worst and the very best. In all 
 other matters he would have naught but the best. 
 He could never tolerate the second rate in cigar- 
 ettes, clothes, literature, trains — what not! A 
 highly experienced frequenter of all the fashionable 
 restaurants in London and Paris, he was treated as 
 an equal by chefs; and maitres d'hotel and waiters 
 simply fawned around him like dogs; but then he 
 had only one way of talking, whether to a prime 
 minister or a waiter ; and he never examined a bill, 
 ' and he gave enormous tips. He was the artist royal. 
 Strange and sinister tales ran about as to the origin 
 of his income. But the origin of his income was 
 quite simple. It came from his connoisseurship in 
 the old masters, in the painters of the Romantic 
 school, and in Japanese painting. He was acknowl- 
 edged, among the initiate, to be one of the supreme 
 European experts. And he stooped to dealing; he 
 was a power behind the thrones of the great dealers. 
 " I must have money," he would say. " And I can 
 get it, so." When he had planted, at an exaggerated 
 price, a bad genuine example of an old master upon 
 a wholesale draper in search of correctness, his pri- 
 vate joy was infantile. Another victory over the 
 hypocritical bourgeois — curse 'em ! He had had lean 
 years, and narrow escapes, but he had also had fat 
 years. In one resplendent year he had bought a 
 
 65 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Titian from an ignorant fool in Liege for a thousand 
 francs, and sold it at Christie's for nineteen thou- 
 sand pounds. " Not honest, of course ! " he would 
 admit. " I ought to have told tlie ass what he was 
 selling to me. But it's within the commercial code. 
 This isn't heaven^t's the earth." It was in that 
 year that London heard of Captain Hulse's private 
 orchestra — a fleeting regal caprice. 
 
 The title " captain " suited him, with his tremen- 
 dous voice and often aggressive demeanor, and his 
 broad, square shoulders; though his stature was a 
 little below the normal of his class. It was a vestige 
 of some youthful strutting in the militia. He de- 
 spised the military temperament with a cruel incan- 
 descent scorn, but he kept to the title, calculating in 
 hundreds of pounds its annual value to him on this 
 human bourgeois earth. 
 
 " They were not cats," Captain Hulse proceeded 
 with his description to my sister of what he had 
 seen, while my wife and I watched. " No ! worse 
 than cats. Cats don't sweat, and even when they 
 scratch they are graceful, they never lose their dig- 
 nity. They were scowling and gasping and pulling 
 faces, their hats all awry, and most absurdly trying 
 to stick their feet into the ground so firm that the 
 policemen couldn't push them on. And there were 
 those great, tall, fat, overfed brutes of policemen, 
 
 66 
 
THE DINNER 
 
 with leather round their waists to keep their gross 
 flesh from sprawling, shoving them along all the 
 time, fumbling, without using their hands, and look- 
 ing right over the girls' heads, like hippopotamuses 
 on their hind legs." 
 
 Never did Johnnie Hulse refer to London police- 
 men save in terms of disgust. It was their height 
 that he could not tolerate. He was secretly very 
 sensitive about his own stature ; nor did the thought 
 of Napoleon soothe him. Once when we were stand- 
 ing side by side alone together at a bookcase in 
 my study, he had said suddenly, in a savage tone, 
 looking up at me: "Gad, Loring, I could murder 
 you!" "Why?" "Because you're eight inches 
 taller than I am." " You could make hay of me," 
 I laughed, and he said : " I know I could." 
 
 He went on, to Mary : 
 
 " And the crowd, the miserable crowd of shabby 
 clerks and fly swallowers, yah-ing and yow-ing and 
 yaw-ing — cads, worse than a Roman mob at a circus, 
 and that's saying something ! It was obscene, noth- 
 ing else but obscene! It took humanity back to 
 the stone and the wood age. And it was the girls 
 who were the cause. I call it an offense against 
 decency." 
 
 Mary, excited and controlling her excitement, 
 nervously looked down at her soup plate. She was 
 
 67 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 wearing a large black-and-white hat. Why she 
 should have retained her hat during dinner I could 
 not imagine, unless for a sign that the visit was 
 informal and that she was a mere pilgrim. But 
 the retention of the hat was characteristic of Mary. 
 
 " And yet you say you are in favor of our cam- 
 paign," she murmured, and sipped at her spoon 
 primly. Mary was influential in the organizing 
 councils of the suffragist cause. I guessed that she 
 had come to London that day for a committee meet- 
 ing. She did not, however, form part of the police- 
 men-assaulting battalions. 
 
 " I was ! I was ! " Johnnie thundered. " But I 
 don't know if I am now. I hadn't seen the cam- 
 paign in action before. I only saw it to-day by 
 sheer accident; and I don't want to see it again. I 
 couldn't stand it. It's obscene, it's bestial." 
 
 " All you need is a course of training," my sister 
 rejoined in her careful voice. " If you can't stand 
 the sight of women ' sweating ' in the street" — she 
 emphasized ever so slightly his Anglo-Saxon word — 
 " you ought to go and see them * sweating ' in laun- 
 dries in Shepherd's Bush, and ' sweating ' in dress- 
 makers' workrooms in Sloane Street, and ' sweat- 
 ing ' in mills in Lancashire, and ' sweating ' behind 
 bars all over England. And if that doesn't harden 
 you, you'll have to tell them personally that they're 
 
 68 
 
THE DINNER 
 
 obscene and ungraceful, and that their proper sphere 
 is the home." 
 
 He stared at her with his glittering eyes, but she 
 kept hers bent on the table. 
 
 " People won't stand those street scenes, you'll 
 find," he muttered. 
 
 " Exactly ! " said my sister with, false calm. 
 " And that's how we shall win ! Not by convincing 
 you, but by shocking you. The British public will 
 never be convinced by argument. But two drops of 
 perspiration on the cheeks of a nice-looking girl with 
 a torn skirt and a crushed hat will make it tremble 
 for the safety of its ideals, and twenty drops will 
 persuade it to sign anything for the restoration of 
 decency. You surely don't suppose that argument 
 will be of any use ! " she finished acidly. 
 
 " How true that is ! " he yielded, with a rich and 
 generous smile that instantly dispelled all the serious 
 hardness of his face. " How true that is ! " And 
 he was off instantly on his favorite horse, charging ' 
 against the cowardly hypocrisy of the British public. 
 
 Mary had won in the encounter. And few wom- 
 en, or men either, would have faced the torrent of 
 Johnnie's invective. Inez, for example, never se- 
 riously disagreed with him, never came to grips. She 
 would retreat — behind a fan, or she would abjectly 
 concur in his thesis. But Mary, the stickler for de- 
 
 69 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 corum, the outwardly timid and gauche, the prim, 
 the demure, the tremendously English — Mary was 
 a fighter. And she had a gift of sarcasm that was 
 a very dangerous weapon. 
 
 The widow of a rich stockbroker, she lived at 
 Harrow with her little daughter, aged seven. Super- 
 ficially she was the most English Englishwoman 
 that you could see in a box at a theater. A neutral ! 
 But the heat of the suffragist movement had some- 
 how broken the obstinate frost of her nature, 
 and her individuality had emerged, was still 
 emerging. 
 
 Difficult to conceive two individualities more dis- 
 similar than hers and Johnnie's ! And yet at their 
 first encounter, six months ago, she had been very 
 visibly impressed by him, and he had surprisingly 
 confided to me his admiration of her character and 
 intellect. She did not conceal that she liked him." 
 She could not. Even in arguing with him, even 
 in pouring out satire on him, she could not. She 
 vibrated with a new and strange vitality when he 
 was present. These phenomena titillated me; I 
 found them poignant. The matchmaker that is in 
 everybody was roused in me. Naturally, no one 
 could foretell the consequences of a union between 
 two such opposing creatures. But then no one could 
 foretell the consequences of any union whatsoever ! 
 
 70 
 
THE DINNER 
 
 The prospect was not without danger. But what 
 prospect is? He was, or had been, in plain word, 
 a libertine. Well, she knew. Everyone knew. I 
 could fancy even that fact did not disserve him in 
 my sister's eyes. He was mentally honester than 
 any stockbroker. And she had enough money for 
 both. It would be positively exciting to see them 
 married, to see Johnnie Hulse as a stepfather, and 
 the prim Mary intimately foregathering with the 
 violent amateur of varied experiences. They were 
 foregathering already. The lunch, tete-a-tete: at 
 whose suggestion, I wondered, had that occurred? 
 And what had they discussed? It pleased me to 
 consider Mary in a new role. Deeper than all these 
 feelings was the desire, possibly quite altruistic, to 
 complete these two fine individualities by joining 
 them. I liked and I respected them both. Johnnie 
 Hulse, as a distinguished painter, a fastidious critic, 
 an honest and powerful intelligence, a man of im- 
 mense moral courage and an original artist in life ! 
 As for my sister, I have never respected a woman 
 more than I did her. And of her irony, and her 
 harsh, brusque common sense, I was almost naively 
 proud. 
 
 " Marion," I said suddenly, " bring some cham- 
 pagne." 
 
 A childish idea on my part. But tradition has 
 71 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 made this meretricious draught the classic symbol of 
 joyous fellowship and spiritual outpouring. 
 
 " I shan't drink your champagne, you know," 
 Johnnie laughed shortly, half sneering, while Marion 
 was speaking in her unmoved anaemia into the tube 
 to the kitchen. He never would touch champagne. 
 
 " The others will," said I. " And I shall." 
 
 And we did, Mary of course demurely, timidly. 
 
 She and Johnnie nearly monopolized the conver- 
 sation. It was their hour. I looked across at Inez. 
 Though she was silent, her eye, too, glanced fires. 
 A mysterious life seemed to be stirring darkly within 
 her. She, too, must have' been quickened by the 
 quickening of passion in Mary and in John Hulse. 
 Far, far, within my soul, the real Me existed still 
 desolate, but resolutely saying to itself : " You must 
 learn to live. Perhaps the whole secret of your 
 despair lies in the fact that, having once loved ar- 
 dently, you had ceased to love. Perhaps it is noth- 
 ing more recondite than that. Perhaps . . ." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE DEPARTURE 
 
 INEZ sat at the piano, reading the " Mournful 
 Birds " of Ravel. I stood fingering a book in a 
 corner of the drawing-room, watching her. Mary 
 and Johnnie Hulse were together on a settee, 
 watching her. The room was brightest over her 
 head. The lines of her gown, of her arms, and of 
 her intent profile were beautiful. Her hands and 
 the gestures of her hands were beautiful. Strange 
 that that woman could not move without creating 
 beauty ! The whole of her life was an evolution of 
 one grace out of another. She was at her best 
 when she knew that she was observed. She be- 
 came then a conscious artist, intensifying by ap- 
 plied skill her appeal to the eye. Hulse felt it. 
 Mary also must have felt it. Mary was pleasant 
 to look upon, particularly her talking eyes and the 
 subtle, critical malice of her lips when they curved 
 downward. But she did not enrapture the sight, 
 and she was not complete. Her movements were 
 somewhat ungainly; her dress was no part of her- 
 self. Inez had a magic power over her dress so 
 
 73 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 that it was always expressive of her. When Inez 
 put on a dress it became alive, endowed with her 
 life, and even a little fold of silk down near her 
 foot would illustrate the elegance of her intention; 
 she could kick the last flounce of it into harmony. 
 Mary's clothes, expensive, stylish, might have 
 been anybody's. Mary's clothes surrounded her 
 and trailed after her by force of hooks ; they passed 
 a dismal existence deprived of love. Mary scorned 
 clothes; at least she scorned her own. Her good 
 clothes were her concession to conventionality. 
 Mary, having intellect and the effective weapon of 
 humor, relied on these. She did not begin to live 
 socially till her body was at rest and her acute self- 
 consciousness reassured. Then her individual- 
 ity would be radioactive. Whereas the individual- 
 ity of Inez spent itself mildly without ceasing in a 
 persuasive appeal to the sight. But it must not 
 be invited to assertion in other ways. Instinctively 
 it avoided such other ways. Inez seldom or never 
 said anything original, or even witty, or memo- 
 rable. She shirked argument, and if compelled to 
 argue, she lost her grace. What intellect she had 
 she would not display. 
 
 And yet the coordination of eye and brain and 
 hands necessary to the smooth reading of the mu- 
 sic as she read it — surely that involved not merely 
 
 74 
 
THE DEPARTURE 
 
 intellectual power, but intellectual power highly 
 disciplined! And it involved a receptiveness, a re- 
 sponsiveness, and a controlled emotional facility 
 that were astonishing. Impossible to dismiss Inez 
 as an inventor of attitudes and a flatterer of the 
 eye! In an encounter, in a collision, Mary could 
 have vanquished her and rendered her ridiculous 
 to the understanding, so far as she might have dif- 
 fered from Mary. But Mary never could have 
 accomplished what Inez was accomplishing, nor any- 
 thing else on the same level of skilled effective- 
 ness. Mary could never shine with that radiance. 
 Whatever Mary's mission was she could not carry 
 it to the same point of perfection as Inez carried 
 her mission of affording aesthetic dehght. Inez, 
 who lived for pleasure, was a marvelous instru- 
 ment of pleasure. And in such a feat as the feat 
 of that evening she was at her best. 
 
 She had impregnated the room with the deli- 
 cious sadness of those mournful birds. Having fin- 
 ished she turned half round on the music stool, her 
 right hand on its rim, and her face, in shadow, lean- 
 ing forward. 
 
 " Well? " she asked, looking at Johnnie. 
 
 " Well," said Johnnie. " He'd got a nerve, no 
 mistake! " 
 
 " Who? " 
 
 6 75 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " The man that brought that to London and 
 played it to an EngHsh audience! Tcha! " He 
 chuckled almost silently. " Tcha! " 
 
 The thought of the dull, heavy hostility of the 
 English audience gave him an intense, sinister joy. 
 He reveled in the stupidity of his fellow-country- 
 men. 
 
 " Do you Hke it? " asked Inez. 
 
 " I'm interested in it," he replied, hesitating. 
 
 " He's only just landed in New York," said 
 Mary. " You mustn't ask him yet what he thinks 
 of the country." 
 
 " New York! " Inez murmured carelessly. " My 
 dear, what are you talking about? Morrice, I wish 
 you'd get me my cigarettes." 
 
 " Will you play another? " Johnnie suggested, 
 leaning back. 
 
 " Play ' A Bark on the Ocean,' " I said, as I 
 looked here and there for her cigarette case. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" she protested. "You choose the 
 most difficult, naturally ! " 
 
 I drew aside the curtains and slightly opened the 
 double doors to go into the dining room. There, 
 one table lamp burned on the sideboard, and under 
 it was Inez's cigarette case. In the shadow, at 
 the far end of the silent room, a figure was bending 
 over the dumb-waiter. It was Marion, fulfilling the 
 
 76 
 
THE DEPARTURE 
 
 last rites. I could distinguish the black of her 
 dress, the white braces of her apron, and the white 
 blossom in her hair. She jumped up on hearing 
 me, and her spectacles glinted darkly on her pale, 
 flabby face. 
 
 " Can I get you anything, sir? " she inquired 
 with respectful eagerness. 
 
 " No, thanks," I said; " I only wanted these 
 cigarettes." 
 
 She turned calmly away. I could have gone up 
 to her and stood over and demanded of her: " And 
 what do you think of life, mysterious Marion? " 
 But of course I did not. Was it a heart that beat 
 within that flat bosom, or was it only a clock? It 
 would seem that I could not, by shutting my outer 
 door on the hanging gallery, shut out enigmas 
 from my abode ! I returned with the cigarette case 
 to the glitter of the drawing-room and drew the 
 curtains on Marion kneeling at the extremity of 
 the dark dining room. 
 
 Inez was staring at the music. Evidently she 
 meant to play again. Suddenly Mary sprang up 
 and went to the piano. 
 
 " Shall I turn over for you, Inez? " 
 
 "Oh, do, dear!" 
 
 Mary drew a chair up to the piano, and sat down, 
 frowning as she examined the pages. And Inez 
 
 77 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 began to play " A Bark on the Ocean," having 
 first exchanged a smile with Mary. Those two 
 women had nothing in common. They had little 
 sympathy with each other. It would have been 
 difficult to believe that Mary did not intellectually 
 condescend toward Inez, and certainly Inez some- 
 times resented the razor which was Mary's tongue. 
 Yet they sat side by side as though endeared by 
 the closest ties of love and mutual comprehension. 
 It seemed as if Mary had suddenly felt compelled 
 to flee from the male on the settee, and that now 
 they two had formed a party for self-protection 
 against the two males in the room. Somehow, 
 Mary, in that moment, appeared to me more a 
 woman than I had ever seen her, and less a mere 
 intellectual sister. They made a picture. They 
 made a symbol. I thought : " Ah, why cannot all 
 fine women be merged into one for the companion- 
 ship of a man? Why cannot a man demand every- 
 thing from a woman and have it? Then the mean- 
 ing of life might be clearer." 
 
 Johnnie was also affected by the grouping of the 
 women. He took from the pocket of his dinner 
 jacket the sketchbook which he often carried, and 
 started to jab marks on it with a green-cased lith- 
 ographic pencil, scowling. I knew that he would 
 be producing something vehement and surprising. 
 
 78 
 
THE DEPARTURE 
 
 He would be capable of centralizing the interest 
 on Mary's hat, and of attempting to express the 
 whole significance of the composition in the curves 
 of the hat. 
 
 Inez played courageously, surging through the 
 incredible arpeggios as the bark surged through 
 the ocean. And all Mary's intellect was concen- 
 trated to the efifort of turning the page at the right, 
 critical instant. The room was full of heaving 
 sound. 
 
 Suddenly Inez threw up her hands and the music 
 ceased. 
 
 " Oh! It's absurd! " she exclaimed crossly. " I 
 can't do it! No one could! It wants three months' 
 practice." 
 
 " I thought you were doing wonderfully." Mary 
 soothed her. And then Mary, turning to Johnnie 
 Hulse for confirmation of her statement that Inez 
 was doing wonderfully, perceived what Johnnie 
 was doing. Her face changed in a singular manner. 
 There was a pause, and she said, glancing at the 
 clock: 
 
 " Oh, I must really go. I must catch the nine- 
 forty to-night." 
 
 Everybody was amazed. 
 
 " But you never go earlier than the ten-forty! " 
 said Inez. 
 
 79 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 This was true. 
 
 " I must, truly, dear! I'll just get my things, if I 
 may." 
 
 Mary went quickly out of the room, nervous, ex- 
 cited, not herself. A trifle had struck me. She 
 had called Inez " dear." Now Mary never ad- 
 dressed another woman in that term, which she 
 reserved for her daughter. She hated any sort of 
 effusiveness, particularly between women; this to 
 the point of an exterior harshness. Yet she had 
 called Inez " dear." Proof sufficient of her discom- 
 posure! She seemed to be growing more femi- 
 nine to me every minute. 
 
 A caprice, of course! The discovery that John- 
 nie was making a drawing of her behind her back 
 had startled the fawn that crouched beneath that 
 intellect of hers; had made her too conscious of 
 herself and of him. And the fawn had fled, ca- 
 priciously, unreflectingly, into the brake. 
 
 Inez lit a cigarette, and then said: 
 
 " I must just go and look after her." 
 
 And Johnnie and I were left alone. We said not 
 a word to each other. We were not quite at ease. 
 It was not to be expected that we should be. The 
 effect of his individuality on Mary's was too patent. 
 Mary was my sister: I felt in a way guilty of any 
 antics she might commit. Moreover, great devel- 
 
 80 
 
THE DEPARTURE 
 
 opments, the mingling of destinies, might be immi- 
 nent. There was that in the air which could not 
 be hinted at, even between cronies. So we sat 
 silent. Johnnie closed the sketchbook and slipped 
 it back into his pocket. 
 
 After interminable minutes I rang the bell. 
 
 " I'd better take measures for a taxi," I mut- 
 tered. 
 
 " Yes," he agreed. " I shall see her as far as the 
 station." 
 
 " Oh! " said I. " You're going, too? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 There was no reply to the bell. I rang again. 
 Still no reply. Then I went out impatiently into 
 the hall, which blazed with light. " Where is that 
 spectacled girl? " I thought. The dining-room 
 door was ajar, and darkness within; she could not 
 be there. I adventured into the kitchen, which 
 was lit but empty. Curious, perplexing, unintelligi- 
 ble spot, the kitchen! So abruptly different from 
 the rest of civilization. On the white deal table an 
 open book lay with the pages downward. And 
 across the green cover I read the gold title, 
 " Wormwood." I hesitated. Then the door of the 
 service stairs opened and Marion appeared. She 
 was nearly breathless, and the sight of me robbed 
 her of what breath she had. 
 
 8i 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " Oh, sir," she gasped. " You give me such a 
 start! " 
 
 It was the first time that I had ever glimpsed the 
 human being in her. 
 
 " I want you to get a taxi or whistle down for 
 one, Marion," I said. 
 
 " I've just been, sir," she answered. " Mistress 
 told me to. It's waiting." 
 
 I regained the hall. I could now hear Johnnie 
 Hulse's stammering fingers on the piano. 
 
 "Great Scott!" I thought. "Are those con- 
 founded women going to chatter in the bedroom 
 forever! " I looked at my watch. It meant noth- 
 ing to me whether Mary caught the nine-forty or 
 the ten-forty. But, as a matter of principle, I ob- 
 jected to the missing of trains and to the careless 
 unfulfillment of programmes. The negligent for- 
 getting of the flight of time annoyed me. " What 
 on earth can they be talking about? " 
 
 Without reflection I passed into my study. This 
 room lay between the bedroom and the drawing- 
 room. It communicated with the bedroom by a 
 small masked door and with the drawing-room by 
 a large door. My directing thought must have 
 been that I might hear them chattering through the 
 thin masked door. But the masked door was open 
 several inches and there was no sound of talking; 
 
 82 
 
THE DEPARTURE 
 
 I could, however, catch a woman's movements. I 
 waited. The piano had stopped. The door leading 
 to the drawing-room was nearly but not quite 
 closed. I approached it hesitatingly. As I did so 
 I faintly heard Johnnie's voice: 
 
 " He's gone to look after the taxi." 
 
 One or other of the women had, then, gone from 
 the bedroom into the drawing-room by way of the 
 study, immediately before my entrance into the 
 study. 
 
 I heard Johnnie's voice, soft and gentle now. 
 
 " Then she'll be at Brondesbury to-morrow at 
 three? " 
 
 And the answer: " Yes." 
 
 It was Inez who had answered. 
 
 I said to myself: " I'd better not let them even 
 suspect that I've overheard that." And instead of 
 going in to the drawing-room direct, I went back 
 into the hall, where I encountered Mary, coming 
 from the direction of the bedroom. She was self- 
 conscious. 
 
 "And well you may be, my child!" I thought 
 grimly, sardonically, with ironical malice that 
 equaled Mary's own. Indeed, women, even 
 one's sisters, were astounding! Here Mary and 
 Johnnie had both taken Inez into their confidence. 
 And Inez and Mary had been discussing ren- 
 
 83 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 dezvous in the bedroom! Why? What could be 
 the significance of all this whispering chicane? 
 Well, so long as it amused them, I should be con- 
 tent! Mary and I entered the drawing-room to- 
 gether. 
 
 Still the same awkwardness between all four of 
 us, the same timidity in meeting one another's 
 eyes! 
 
 " I'd sent for a taxi," said Inez to me. " I hope 
 you haven't contrived to get two." 
 
 " No," I said. " That's all right." 
 
 The captain went forth hurriedly in search of 
 his overcoat. There was a certain confusion and 
 considerable hurry. Mary accepted quite' tran- 
 quilly the information that Johnnie meant to ac- 
 company her to her train, she who had shrunk from 
 him because he was including her in a sketch! 
 
 We all went out into the hanging gallery to- 
 gether, the girls talking. The lift, a cube of light, 
 shot up at great speed and stopped with a jerk 
 opposite our faces. The doors clicked open, and 
 the uniformed infant stepped out, saluting us in 
 quasi-military fashion. Mary and the captain went 
 into the lift, and the child followed, caging them 
 in, and for an instant they hung there, close to each 
 other, in the intimacy of the lift, smiling naively. 
 It seemed to me that they were already united. At 
 
 84 
 
THE DEPARTURE 
 
 any rate, their sudden departure like that, with the 
 knowledge in their hearts of the rendezvous for 
 the morrow which Inez had doubtless helped to 
 arrange during the interminable secret gossip in 
 the bedroom, presented itself to me as having 
 in it something of the irrevocable. " And they do 
 not suspect that I know!" I reflected. Though 
 why there should be a conspiracy and, if a conspir- 
 acy, why I should be omitted from it, I could not 
 determine. Then the lift sank swiftly away and 
 the steel ropes trailed after it from the ceiling into 
 the depths. 
 
 We reentered the flat, Inez and myself. I went 
 straight to the drawing-room, opened wide the 
 window and stood out on the balcony. The night 
 was warm, and high above the gas lamps of the 
 square, higher even than the balcony, the elm trees 
 waved uneasily, apprehensively, in the evening 
 breeze. 
 
 Underneath me I could see the forward half of 
 the roof of a toy taxicab. The other half was 
 thrown back. Three little figures, one white, 
 flashed across the pavement, and two got into the 
 vehicle, while the third slammed the door. I could 
 hear the strong, resonant voice of Johnnie saying: 
 
 " Baker Street." 
 
 And the cab began to describe a curve, rounding 
 85 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 like a boat into the middle of the Square and so 
 toward Bayswater Road. It moved silently, as 
 though creeping after prey. Then, as it approached 
 the thoroughfare, it gave a stern double " toot," 
 and vanished into London. And they were in it 
 together, the opposing temperaments, piquantly 
 imprisoned. I thought: " For him, at the end of all 
 his adventures, Mary — the prim and English Mary 
 — has become the eternal feminine! " And: " This 
 will be far better for her than continually worrying 
 about the bringing up of her child. She's got some- 
 thing else to think about now." I was glad. I was 
 almost joyous. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE THUNDERCLAP 
 
 WHEN I reentered the room from the bal- 
 cony, Inez was again sitting at the piano, idly 
 turning over the pages of Ravel's " Miroirs." She 
 did not look at me : she gave no sign of being aware 
 of my presence. There had been a certain self-con- 
 scious stififness in the relations of the four of us, 
 previous to the guests' departure, and this had been 
 caused by the obvious eflfect of Johnnie's personality 
 on Mary's. Now a more intimate awkwardness lay 
 between Inez and me. I judged that it was due to 
 the sense of expectation in both our hearts, the sense 
 that a new crisis, a solemn and decisive movement 
 in our lives was at hand ; for I was convinced from 
 her demeanor that Inez had divined in me the birth 
 of a different attitude toward her. I was nervous, 
 and she also. The future depended upon ourselves ; 
 perhaps it chiefly depended upon me, upon the tact 
 and the courage which I should immediately dis- 
 play. None could disturb us. I was alone, in the 
 most favorable nocturnal circumstances of ease, 
 
 87 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 beauty, and seclusion, with this beautiful and ac- 
 complished woman. Even the bright softness of the 
 shaded electricity descending on her hair and her 
 nape and her hands, and on the harmonious folds of 
 her gown, and on the dark spreading carpet around 
 her, was an aid to the enterprise; every detail con- 
 sented. 
 
 Physical thoughts shot in a;nd out among the 
 graver in my mind. But they were not paramount. 
 And my reason repudiated them. I now seemed to 
 envisage my enterprise more clearly and completely, 
 though it was still vague. I was deliberately to 
 seek my happiness in Inez and in the imitation of 
 Inez. I was to occupy myself with this incom- 
 parable instrument of various pleasure which I had 
 neglected for so long. I was to do again, and bet- 
 ter, under the impulsion of reason what I had once 
 done under the impulsion of instinct. I was to 
 manipulate my existence, to prove by acts that reason 
 did reign in me. My Hfe, in that I was daily 
 growing more unhappy for no assignable cause, had 
 to be reckoned so far a failure. But the unconquer- 
 able in me would not submit to the increasing domi- 
 nation of ennui. I was bored ; I had possibly a quar- 
 ter of a century yet to live : was I going cravenly to 
 submit to boredom during all those years each of 
 which would be longer than the one before it ? Was 
 
 88 
 
THE THUNDERCLAP 
 
 I ready to acknowledge so miserable a fiasco ? The 
 question answered itself. 
 
 And in my need and my peril, I approached Infez. 
 I had been too solitary, too self-centered, too un- 
 worldly. I had committed the insolent error of liv- 
 ing in the world as one in a foreign country who 
 refuses to accept the standards of that country. I 
 had despised small things. I had despised the pres- 
 ent. And my attitude was guilty of intellectual ar- 
 rogance. Inez was the heaven-sent cure and 
 antidote. At its inception my movement to her was 
 egoistic. I thought not of her advantage but solely 
 of my own. I regarded her as an instrument. But, 
 as I reflected, my enterprise was tinged with the 
 beautiful colors of altruism. I saw that, though her 
 discontent had lessened, while mine had waxed, she 
 must nevertheless have suffered much. I saw her 
 as forlorn ; and her cheerfulness and self-,satisfaction 
 as a thin crust over a horrible emptiness. We had 
 both been the victims of capricious love ; but I was 
 the stronger, the older, the wiser — I with my con- 
 descending intellectual power — and my intellect 
 ought at least to have had the wit and the justice 
 to devise the expression of some sympathy with her. 
 Because we had ceased to love I had found offense 
 in her. True that she had found offense in me! But 
 I ought to have been more rational. I wanted to 
 
 89 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 compensate. I wanted to repair. Yes, I wanted to 
 make her happy, to envelope her with my sympathy 
 and comprehension and voluntary affection, as with 
 an odor. All this sprang from egoism, from the 
 acute realization of my own peril. But whatever its 
 origin, it was genuine, and it was undoubtedly a 
 powerful medicine for my malady. 
 
 My feeling was less rapturous than first love ; but 
 it was finer. First love seemed crude, clumsy, blind, 
 compared to it. I was acting now in the plenitude 
 of reason and of experience. My heart was mellowed, 
 the sweep of my brain far wider. My vision went 
 beyond death. I knew that matter and spirit were 
 one and were eternal, having never been created,, 
 incapable of ever being destroyed. I knew that every 
 thought and deed reverberated in the future with 
 everlasting consequences, and that to be true or false 
 to the fleeting hour was to be true or false to eternity. 
 In brief, I was religious. 
 
 Inez began to play, softly, a detached and salient 
 phrase from the " Mournful Birds." She repeated 
 it several times,, and it resounded delicately in the 
 room, intensely sad. But it did not sadden me. I 
 exulted in her interpretation of it, in her quick and 
 accurate responsiveness to the mood of the com- 
 poser. I said to myself again : " After all, this wom- 
 an is marvelous. Look at her, sitting there — is she 
 
 90 
 
THE THUNDERCLAP 
 
 not a miracle ? " I reflected how much easier it was, 
 for a man of ray intellectual solitude and impatience, 
 to live with a creature like Inez than with a creature 
 like Mary. Mary was not receptive; she did not 
 take impressions. She could not be cajdled with a 
 caress or a flattery or a comforting deviation from 
 the truth. She spent herself intellectually, and she 
 expected others to do the same. She could not leave 
 things alone; she would not be put off. She was 
 a rock, and when she collided with other rocks, the 
 jar was afflicting. I admired and respected her. I 
 had a great affection for her. But I said to myself 
 that if I had to live with her I should expire of 
 fatigue and loss of blood. Whereas Inez could be 
 managed. Inez had none of that terrible hatred of 
 compromise. You might call her intellectually dis- 
 honest; but it would be fairer to say that she at- 
 tached no importance to intellect either honest or dis- 
 honest ; she perhaps feared it slightly. She existed 
 among her instincts on the aesthetic and emotional 
 plane. She was never really ashamed of her in- 
 stincts. Call her less advanced than Mary ; call her 
 nearer the savage. But what a source of pleasure 
 to all the senses ! What an aesthetic delight ! What 
 extreme skill she had acquired in the expression of 
 the responsiveness by means of which alone she could 
 satisfy her instincts! 
 
 7 91 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Now, the physical thoughts which I had repulsed 
 gradually rose uppermost in my mind. And I did 
 not try to repulse them. It seemed to me to be 
 right, to be, at any rate, inevitable, that they should 
 soften the hard operations of my reason. I abandoned 
 myself to them. She was within ten feet of me, the 
 miracle. And suddenly I lost the sense of the mys- 
 teriousness of woman, and of Inez in particular, 
 which had been growing in me. I knew that the 
 mysteriousness of woman vanished the instant you 
 brutally faced it. Boys and aging celibates are 
 obsessed by the mysteriousness of woman. The ob- 
 session is a sign either of immaturity or of morbid- 
 ity. The mysteriousness of woman — take her, and 
 see then if she is mysterious! . . . 
 
 How could I begin my enterprise of reconstruct- 
 ing our two lives ? The moment was pregnant with 
 consequences. Inez still played, intermittently. I 
 said to rtiyself that I must do - something, that I 
 must make a start, and that to postpone might be 
 fatal. Some act, some gesture, some word, must be 
 launched forth. I waited for myself, as for another. 
 And expectancy passed into an anguish of appre- 
 hension. An enchantment lay upon us. 
 
 It was she who broke it, by saying, without look- 
 ing round: 
 
 " I wonder if they were in time for the train." 
 92 
 
THE THUNDERCLAP 
 
 I laughed. " If they weren't, it would be no 
 new thing, for him, at any rate. However," I added, 
 with a touch of gay quizzicalness, " -you may depend 
 on his being prompt to-morrow." 
 
 " To-morrow ? " she questioned, in a peculiar, un- 
 certain tone, still without turning round. 
 
 " Yes," I said. " At Brondesbury, at three." As- 
 suredly there was laughter in my voice. I was 
 jocund. I deemed it bizarre — ^this rendezvous be- 
 tween Mary and Johnnie at Brondesbury at three, 
 this rendezvous which they had concealed from me, 
 but of which Inez had been the privy agent. But I 
 accepted it in excellent humor, and I saw no reason 
 why I should hide my knowledge of it from my wife. 
 
 Then came the thunderclap. 
 
 " You've been listening — ^you've been eaves- 
 dropping ! " she exclaimed harshly, in the hoarse 
 tone of one who is parched by thirst. She revolved 
 on the music stool, and faced me. She was angry, 
 acutely inimical: to what extent I did not imme- 
 diately realize. 
 
 " My dear girl — " I murmured, at a loss. 
 
 The expression of her features made me feel sick 
 with fear. I do not exaggerate. The whole pose 
 of her body indicated a violent emotion of bitter 
 hostility toward me. All her grace had gone. I 
 was dumfounded. I was completely mystified. I 
 
 93 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 was put to shame. I could not think. Slowly — ^and 
 yet how rapidly! — there formed itself in my mind 
 the idea that I was to be the victim of some ir- 
 remediable and astounding disaster. The room was 
 changed into a theater of fate, and it seemed ex- 
 traordinary to me that the electric light should be 
 burning as usual. 
 
 " Don't ! " Inez cried. " I won't stand any more. 
 I won't stand it! I told Johnnie all along you 
 guessed. But he wouldn't believe me. How long 
 have you known ? " 
 
 "Known what?" 
 
 She answered in a smothered voice, looking at 
 the carpet : " About Johnnie and me." 
 
 I offered no reply. I could not speak. The whole 
 feverish energy of my brain was employed in a 
 tremendous readjustment of all my notions of the 
 immediate past and of that evening. I was like a 
 man who has stumbled on a cipher key which turns 
 a series of harmless and agreeable phrases into some 
 dire and convincing prophecy of woe. I said noth- 
 ing. I was aware of a terrific desire to rise and 
 wrench the electric chandelier out of the ceiling, and 
 with it to destroy everything fragile in the room. 
 By an immense, a too costly effort, I restrained my- 
 self, for I surmised that if I yielded to the desire I 
 should rave into madness. I sat still. 
 
 94 
 
tHE THUNDERCLAP 
 
 I had remembered a habit of Johnnie Hulse's. ' 
 When he wished to cajole, to be tender, he would 
 address a woman in the third person, as one ad- 
 dresses a charming child. I had heard him do 
 it more than once; I well recall one occasion in 
 the promenade of the Ottoman Theater of Va- 
 rieties. 
 
 " Cur ! " she said, blazing on me. " I wonder you 
 weren't ashamed. . . . No, I don't! I don't! . . . 
 Keeping up all this pretense that you thought it was 
 Mary he was keen on! And then asking him to 
 dinner on the top of everything! And keeping it 
 up all the evening, like you did ! . . . Well, it serves 
 you right! But you needn't think I didn't know! 
 I felt it all the time. Johnnie thought he had per- 
 suaded me I was wrong, and I tried to be persuaded. 
 But I never was! I never was! I've known for 
 days you knew. I expect you thought yourself 
 frightfully clever and superior — ^horrid old cat play- 
 ing with two mice. Well, you weren't so clever as 
 you imagined. I knew you knew ! , I knew ! And I 
 didn't care! And I don't care!" 
 
 She paused. Then she exploded in supreme scorn- 
 ful disgust: 
 
 " It was just like you! " 
 
 She did not move. Nor did I. All the faces in 
 all the pictures seemed to wait. 
 
 95 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 A voice which issued from my Hps said coldly to 
 Inez: 
 
 " You are very melodramatic. I did not know. 
 I knew nothing. I suspected nothing at all. I did 
 by mere accident overhear him saying : ' Will she be 
 at Brondesbury at three ? ' But I thought he meant 
 Mary, because I had Mary in my mind." 
 
 She shook her head violently, determined to dis- 
 believe. 
 
 " You've simply given yourself away," said the 
 same cold voice. 
 
 (" It is astonishing," I thought, " that I should be 
 talking calmly like this. Has something snapped in 
 my head? ") 
 
 She would have given worlds to be able to con- 
 tinue to disbelieve, to be able to condemn me in her 
 heart as an icy and devilish mocking monster of 
 horrible guile. But she could not. She remained 
 silent. 
 
 " You've simply given yourself away," the voice 
 numbly repeated. 
 
 "Well," she rasped. "What if I have! Now 
 you know ! And I'm glad ! " 
 
 She jumped up from the music stool, turned on 
 her heel, flung back the tail of her skirt with a char- 
 acteristic gesture, and walked slowly and proudly 
 from the room into the study, the door of which was 
 
 96 
 
THE THUNDERCLAP 
 
 still ajar. Her skirt followed her, as it were reluc- 
 tantly, round the jamb of the doorway and vanished. 
 The (^oor banged. I was alone with the furniture 
 and the hangings and the pictures, and all these dead 
 things had life, were tingling and trembling to the 
 thunderclap. Only I was calm and cold. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN THE STUDY 
 
 THE classic deceived husband, fatuously 
 blind: I had been that! How often in my 
 life had I smiled at the proverbial philosophy of 
 those artists in adultery, the French, who postu- 
 late the stupid vanity of the male spouse; su- 
 periorly thinking that no matter what wife I might 
 have chanced to marry, that particjular mishap 
 could never overtake me unawares ! 
 
 There it was! 
 
 I saw everything in a new light. There was 
 nothing in the recent behavior of Captain Hulse 
 and Inez which did not seem to contribute proof 
 of their guilt. Even the sudden throwing up of her 
 hands when she was reading Ravel's music — ^how 
 unlike her that was, really! It had always been a 
 point of honor with her never to stop when she 
 had once began to read music at sight, until some- 
 how she arrived triumphant at the end. That she 
 should have so thrown up her hands was absolute 
 proof of inquietude due to some recondite cause. 
 
 98 
 
IN THE STUDY 
 
 Undoubtedly, the tenor of the evening had affected 
 her profoundly. The situation, aggravated by her 
 secret conviction that my ignorance of it was as- 
 sumed, had lacerated her nerves till she scarcely 
 knew what she was doing. And I had not sus- 
 pected! Her silences, her baffling demeanor, her 
 self^consciousness had been due not in the slight- 
 est degree to her preoccupation concerning my 
 new attitude toward her, but to something quite 
 other. It was certain that she had not perceived 
 any change in my attitude toward her. She had, 
 of course, not guessed that I was conceiving new 
 lives for us both. And I had not suspected! Im- 
 becile egotism! 
 
 Those two had swathed and swathed me in de- 
 ceit. They had, for example, taken advantage of 
 my naive interest in the fact that Johnnie had im- 
 pressed my sister. Johnnie, at any rate, had judi- 
 ciously fostered in me the illusion that the attrac- 
 tion was mutual. He had utihzed my sister as a 
 cover for my lyife. Or, at any rate, he had seen na 
 reason why he should deprive himself of my sis- 
 ter's diverting tongue because he happened to be 
 making love to my wife. How preposterous ever 
 to have supposed that a man like Johnnie would 
 make love to a woman like my sister — ^with her 
 ideas! Yet I had supposed it. How audaciously 
 
 99 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 and how successfully he had practiced on my sim- 
 plicity! I could hear him discreetly hinting to 
 Inez, in the drawing-room, before Mary had come 
 and before I had come, that he should " play up " 
 to Mary for my benefit during the evening. I 
 could catch the calm cynicism of his tone. . . . 
 All the subsequent self-consciousness, which I had 
 set down to a general perception of a nascent pas- 
 sion between Johnnie and Mary, had sprung from 
 an origin infinitely more complex. Nay, more! I 
 could believe now that Mary's sudden departure 
 might have been owing to a lightning of the truth 
 in her mind. Woman's intuition, and so forth! 
 Who could say? 
 
 And I had celebrated the occasion with cham- 
 pagne. 
 
 Of course Johnnie's conduct was infamous. It 
 would have been infamous without the astounding 
 insult to my sister. That made it merely ineffable. 
 Yes, but in my heart I did not feel it to be infa- 
 mous. I could not, to myself, argue like a fash- 
 ionable K. C. in the Divorce Court. My opinion of 
 Johnnie as a man of honor scarcely fell. So far as 
 Johnnie was concerned I regarded my case as the 
 case of some third person. I knew that the code 
 of honor does not run in the kingdom of passion. In 
 that kingdom everything became suddenly " dif- 
 
 100 
 
IN THE STUDY 
 
 ferent," all laws being abrogated. I knew that 
 Johnnie would not be ashamed. He would be an- 
 noyed when he knew of Inez's confession ; he would 
 sympathize with me. But he would not blush. I 
 knew that no man whose mind was broad and vig- 
 orous enough for me to respect it, would refuse to 
 take the hand of Johnnie Hulse because the dog 
 had made his intimate friend a cuckold. Useless 
 to talk about ruining a home, outraging hospital- 
 ity, base deceit, flagrant immorality! Phrases! 
 Phrases! Unsupported by the genuine opinion of 
 either men or women. She loved him; she had 
 ceased to love me. Her life was a desert with me ; he 
 was the oasis to slake her thirst for romantic 
 sympathy. Hence, all was permitted, all was ex- 
 cusable. 
 
 Do you know what I resented more than any- 
 thing? Her solicitude in the bedroom when she 
 learned that I had forgotten my tea! Her " Mor- 
 rice! " half petulant and half maternal! Her " my 
 poor boy," ditto! Her good-humored, reproachful 
 raised finger when I came late into the drawing- 
 room for dinner! Shameful acting! Acting beyond 
 the bounds of cynicism! And if all this was not 
 acting, if it came naturally to her, then it was even 
 worse; it was immoral in a deep and universal 
 sense, surpassing the sexual. 
 
 lOI 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Why Brondesbury? Had the fellow got a sec- 
 ond gargonniere (oh, language of the French, we 
 could not do without you, in these matters !) up at 
 Brondesbury? If so, the choice of Brondesbury 
 was a fair example of the wild and yet wise humor 
 which pervaded his amorous life! But he had 
 never breathed the quaint name of Brondesbury 
 to me! . . . Well, naturally! 
 
 Perhaps she was not yet his mistress. I did not 
 know. I knew naught save that they were presum- 
 ably all in all to each other. And I should never 
 inquire. Wotds give existence to things. In some 
 circumstances speech is morbid, and the desire for 
 speech a demonstration of weakness. 
 
 Well, she had caught him, too! He, too, was 
 down at her level, forced into all the pretenses and 
 self-deceptions which are inevitable when intelli- 
 gence must subordinate itself to instinct. I pitied 
 him — him a distinguished artist, a powerful and 
 original individuality, my equal, creatively far 
 more than my equal. 
 
 I had indeed chosen a suitable moment to ex- 
 pend my sympathy upon her, to occupy myself 
 with the question of her happiness, and even the 
 question of her eternal welfare ! My heart had been 
 sending out to her waves of human affection; my 
 conscience had been exercised concerning my ob- 
 
 I02 
 
IN THE STUDY 
 
 ligations to her. I had drawn close to her. I had 
 dissolved in tenderness. I had "excused her. I had 
 reprimanded myself. I was plotting her bliss. And, 
 the while, she and Johnnie were all in all to each 
 other. Reward of virtue! Reward of fatuity! 
 
 I knew that my case was hopeless now. The 
 sole way of escape was gone. I was ruined, 
 beaten. I should have to acknowledge my life a 
 fiasco. Nothing could save me from that humilia- 
 tion, nor avert the disaster of the middle age and old 
 age. I had just to set my teeth — and exist. There 
 is a certain satisfaction in hopefulness amidst the 
 extreme of misery. You press it to you, as the 
 martyr clutched the burning fagot. You enjoy 
 it. You savor piquantly your woe, your shame, 
 your abjectness, the failure of your philosophy. 
 You celebrate the perdition of the man in you. 
 You want to talk about it brazenly; even to exag- 
 gerate it, and to swagger over it. Neither in the 
 world, nor in my sanctuary, could I distinguish any 
 ray of promise. I abandoned myself to despair and 
 bitterness, as to the bosom of a woman. I saw the 
 years passing slowly over me as I lay supine. 
 
 Then I heard a faint regular sound of sobbing, 
 which came from the study. Instead of retiring to 
 the bedroom, as she ought to have done, Inez had 
 halted in my study, and was making a foolish scene 
 
 103 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 there by herself to herself. I had a desire to go to 
 her. But I thought angrily : " No. I won't go near 
 her. She can blubber there all night for all I care." 
 Still, I had a desire to go to her. Perhaps it was 
 to triumph over her; perhaps it was to show her 
 with calm impartiality how far I was above her; 
 perhaps it was to clutch my fagot; or perhaps it 
 was the mere housemaidish hankering to talk, talk, 
 repeating the same idea a thousand times, when 
 words are viciously futile. 
 
 I rose. A force within me was driving me toward 
 her. My movements were curiously clumsy. I 
 had a strong recurrence of my former impulse to 
 wrench down the electric chandelier. But again I 
 refrained, I yawned. Glancing at myself in the 
 mirror of the overmantel, I saw nothing abnormal 
 in my appearance. It did not appear to me that I 
 was even paler than usual. I opened the study 
 door, full of morbid curiosity. My limbs continued 
 to be very maladroit in executing the orders of my 
 brain. 
 
 The electricity was not turned on in the study, 
 but through the uncurtained window there came 
 enough diffused luminosity to show dimly the various 
 objects in the room. At first I did not see her, 
 for at the noise of the door she had ceased sob- 
 bing. Then I distinguished her form, at the desk. 
 
 104 
 
IN THE STUDY 
 
 She was seated in my writing chair; her left elbow 
 was on the desk and her head lay on her left hand. 
 She had chosen my writing chair, in which no one 
 ever sat but me, for weeping; she was weeping on 
 my blotting pad! It was, I thought, just like a 
 woman. But perhaps she did not know what she 
 was doing. 
 
 I pulled at the little electric knob, and a cascade 
 of light descended upon her. I ^meant to avoid 
 the sentimentality of twilight scenes. Now I could 
 see the tear marks below her eyes. 
 
 Without moving her head to look at me, she 
 began to speak, and at the sound of her voice, her 
 sobs recommenced, breaking up her sentences. 
 
 " It's no use," she whimpered. " I couldn't 
 stand it any longer ... I couldn't stand it. . . . 
 You don't know. . . . You think you know every- 
 thing, but you don't. ... A woman like me can't 
 do without love. . . . I've stood it too long . . . 
 getting up in the morning with the feeling that no 
 man in the world was thinking about me — ^was 
 neither happy nor unhappy because of me. . . . 
 How many years have I stood that? ... Do you 
 suppose I got used to it? . . . Never! And I 
 never should! Not if I was a hundred! . . . You 
 don't understand what my life is. . . . You don't 
 understand Hfe at all." 
 
 105 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " I understand what common sense is," I said 
 calmly. " What good do you think you're doing 
 by talking like a schoolgirl? Damn it! You're 
 thirty-four. You know as well as I do that I've al- 
 ways done the decent thing by you — and am I 
 blaming you for gallivanting with your friend the 
 captain? It's your affair. What good can you 
 possibly do by talking about it — at any rate to 
 me?" 
 
 " Decent thing by me ! " she exclaimed, before I 
 had finished speaking. " Never! You never did the 
 decent thing by me! You never thought of any 
 soul on this earth except yourself. . . . You never 
 really thought of anything but your work." 
 
 " Well," I put in, with a short, condescending 
 laugh, " work is work ! " 
 
 " What's your work to me? " she went on. 
 " You took me. And then you left me to take care 
 of myself while you worked. Even when you were 
 kissing me you thought about your work. Do you 
 think I couldn't see it in your eyes? Your work 
 was more important to you than any woman — any 
 human creature. . . . Work's all very well for you. 
 . . . But even you only worked because something 
 made you. . . . Everybody doesn't want to work. 
 ... It depends how you're born. . . . What's 
 your work to me? . . . What good did it ever do 
 
 1 06 
 
IN THE STUDY 
 
 to me? ... It isn't I who'm famous. ... It 
 isn't I that people bow down to, and that the news- 
 papers talk about. ... I haven't got a great brain, 
 and, what's more, I don't want one. All that I 
 want is for some one to be thinking about me ! " 
 
 " I didn't know you were so desperately miser- 
 able," I said. " You've had everything you've 
 asked for, anyhow, for a long time now! " (" The 
 worst of women," I reflected crossly, " is that they 
 make you talk when you don't want to.") I added 
 aloud, in spite of myself: " I always did everything 
 I could for you." 
 
 " I haven't had everything I wanted! " she cried. 
 " And you never did do everything you could for 
 me! . . . You never sacrificed a single half hour 
 of your work for me! . . . Because you honestly 
 thought with your fearful selfishness that your 
 work was more important than your wife." 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders. She did not shift her 
 gaze from the door communicating with the bed- 
 room. Her right hand drummed hysterically on 
 the desk. I looked away, and my eye caught the 
 little masterpiece of Johnnie Hulse, which hung 
 near the door where I stood. 
 
 " You'd much better not excite yourself," I 
 murmured. " You'd much better go to bed — in- 
 stead of stopping here." 
 
 8 107 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " And there's another thing," she burst out, ig- 
 noring my advice. " Supposing Johnnie and I do 
 care for each other? . . . Whose fault is that? " 
 
 " No doubt, mine," I said frigidly. 
 
 " Not yours, and not anybody's ! ... If you fall 
 in love, you fall in love, and there you are! . . . 
 When you fell in love with me — who asked you to? 
 You couldn't help it. Neither could I. . . . We 
 just did what we had to do. . . . And when we 
 didn't care for each other any more, we couldn't 
 help that either! If either you or I had been mar- 
 ried when we first met, would that have made any 
 difiference? Would you have left me alone? You 
 know it wouldn't, but you haven't got the moral 
 pluck to say so. Nobody preached at you when 
 you had rheumatic fever and made everyone mis- 
 erable for weeks and weeks. . . . Nobody said 
 you ought to be ashamed of yourself for having 
 rheumatic fever, because, of course, you couldn't 
 help it. . . . Well, can Johnnie and I help it? . . . 
 It's just luck if you don't happen to fall in love 
 with some one you oughtn't to fall in love with. 
 And, naturally, it's always the lucky people who 
 preach! " 
 
 " I'm not preaching," I said politely. " You've 
 got your religion — I expect you know what you're 
 about." 
 
 io8 
 
IN THE STUDY 
 
 " Don't talk about my religion," she protested. 
 " That's another thing. You always make fun of 
 my religion. And if I were to die now, I should 
 die in mortal sin, because I didn't go to mass last 
 Sunday. I saw him instead. . . . And that's what 
 love is to me! And I don't care if I do die in mor- 
 tal sin. . . . But you don't understand. You 
 can't. You're too cold. . . . You only understand 
 semiquavers." 
 
 I smiled and moved toward the drawing-room. 
 " I ought never to have left it," I said to myself. 
 It seemed inconceivable that only a few minutes 
 earlier I had meant to be kissing this Inez. 
 
 " I'll leave you," I said. " All I have to say, and 
 all I shall say, is that I should have thought you 
 or Captain Hulse would have had more common 
 sense, to put it no higher. Not to mention the 
 scandal, you're simply making misery for your- 
 selves. And the funny thing is that you know it. 
 You aren't such a fool as not to be able to see 
 that. And I'm certain he isn't ! And what are you 
 doing it for — ^because you can't help it? . . . 
 You'll excuse me saying it, but you make me sick 
 with your infantile arguments. Sick!" 
 
 I could feel anger rising within me again. And 
 I scorned both of them intensely for their vulgar 
 disregard of their own dignity, and for that decency 
 
 109 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the maintenance of which was to me perhaps the 
 most sacred of civilized obligations. I turned. 
 
 "Morrice!" 
 
 She now looked at me. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I've never — Johnnie and I — ^you know what I 
 mean " 
 
 " Been his mistress? " 
 
 "Never! I swear it!" She gave a grandiose 
 gesture. 
 
 " I'd sooner you'd be his mistress than be melo- 
 dramatic," I replied. " What do I care whether 
 you've been his mistress or not? I neither believe 
 you nor disbelieve you. Besides, to-morrow, at 
 Brondesbury, at three . . ." 
 
 I raised my hands. The sarcasm in them cut her 
 to fury. 
 
 " You think yourself very clever," she almost 
 shrieked. " I wish you could hear Johnnie make 
 fun of you, just for five minutes! Oh, I wish you 
 could! " 
 
 The immense and cruel injustice of which I was 
 the victim filled me with a cyclonic resentment. I 
 had a tremendous desire to snatch down Hulse's 
 painting from the wall and smash it to pieces. But 
 I refrained. I controlled myself. The picture was 
 beautiful, masterful. Better possibly for me if I 
 
 no 
 
IN THE STUDY 
 
 had not kept such a rein on myself! Better if I had 
 exploded! I moved farther toward the drawing- 
 room; that is to say, I meant to move, but did not. 
 Then I meant to speak — it was an appeal for help 
 — but did not. Then I was conscious of the most 
 acute physical pain, and I fell to the floor. Only 
 afterwards did I learn that this intolerable, suf?o- 
 cating, stabbing pain was caused by a paroxysm of 
 the heart 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE DOCTOR 
 
 SEND for the doctor," I implored her, speaking 
 in gasps with the greatest difficulty. " I'm 
 dying." 
 
 I knew that some great physical disaster had hap- 
 pened to me and that I was dying. I knew that I 
 could not bear for very long the intense, almost in- 
 credible pains that had seized me about the region 
 of my heart. There were loud reverberations in my 
 head. 
 
 Inez's face was transfigured by alarm. Her first 
 impulse was, of course, to raise me from the ground. 
 " No, no ! " I begged feebly, like a tortured child. 
 Our relations were now utterly changed. I had for- 
 gotten everything except my bodily organism, 
 which alone interested me. I had no strength, and 
 she had much strength. I would have descended to 
 any moral abjection in-order to persuade her not to 
 use her strength in ways contrary to my instinct of 
 self-preservation. And that instinct was to remain 
 exactly as I was. I was supporting the upper part 
 
 112 
 
THE DOCTOR 
 
 of my body on my two arms, my face being a few 
 inches from the carpet and my legs twisted under 
 me. I breathed very quickly, in short breaths. I 
 was afraid to breathe. All my muscles were tense 
 in the effort of bearing the pain. Rapidly, wildly, 
 between two breaths, I despairingly begged : 
 
 "Doctor!" 
 
 She hesitated, and then, rising from her bent pos- 
 ture, ran from the room. The pain extended down 
 my left arm. But I dared not move. I could hear 
 her at the telephone, speaking in a low, excited 
 tone. 
 
 " Yes, yes," I whispered to myself. " That's it. 
 That's it. Quick! Quick! I can't stand it much 
 longer." 
 
 I heard Inez saying at the telephone: " Is that 
 you, doctor ? . . . Yes, at once. . . . In a cab, please. 
 His heart — something." 
 
 " That's right ! " I whispered to myself. " He's 
 at home. What luck ! What luck ! " 
 
 A door shut sharply, and there was a complete 
 silence. I guessed that Inez was calling the servants, 
 who had probably gone to bed. When she returned 
 to me, I lifted a little my humiliated head. The pain 
 had slightly diminished ; but it was still what is com- 
 monly called intolerable. 
 
 " I must sit in a chair," I entreated. She was 
 "3 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 omnipotent. She had me at her mercy. My eyes 
 appealed to her like the eyes of a slave. 
 
 " Better lie down," she suggested, with the in- 
 tensely irritating wise kindness of all-powerful all- 
 wisdom. 
 
 " No, no ! " I besought. " Easy-chair ! . . . I 
 must lean forward." 
 
 She assisted me to an easy-chair. I sank into it, 
 and with my right arm pressed against its arm, I 
 leaned forward over it, sideways. The pain in- 
 creased, and then diminished again, irregularly. My 
 breathing continued to be very rapid and shallow. 
 
 " Some brandy ? " she suggested. 
 
 I shook my head.- " Wait ! wait ! " I whispered 
 impatiently. I could scarcely believe that the pain 
 was lessening. The fact seemed too good to be 
 true. But it was true. I emitted an " Ah! " 
 
 Inez kneeled in front of me, and held my left 
 hand. 
 
 "Is he coming?" I whispered. 
 
 She nodded encouragingly. 
 
 " Good ! " I whispered. But I was not in the 
 slightest degree reassured. I knew that I was dying. 
 I had no hope of the doctor. But I wanted to die 
 properly, with the minimum of torture and of igno- 
 rant clumsiness. 
 
 " Bring me a mirror ! " I said. 
 114 
 
THE DOCTOR- 
 
 As the pain slowly decreased, her moral empire 
 over me decreased. I did not feel so dependent 
 upon her. 
 
 " A mirror ? " she questioned. 
 
 " Yes," I said. " Hand glass — anything. I want 
 to see myself. . . . Go on ! " I added commandingly, 
 as she faltered. Owing to the extraordinary rever- 
 berations in my head, I could only hear indistinctly 
 even my own words. 
 
 She went into the bedroom and came back with 
 a hand mirror, and held it so that I could see my 
 face. My face was pale, with a curious flush under 
 the wild eyes, and glistening with perspiration. My 
 hands, too, perspired. Yet I was chilled to the mar- 
 row. I gazed long at my image, at the poor, drawn, 
 beaten, condemned, undignified figure, trying some- 
 how to rend its secret. Then I shut my eyes. 
 
 " He'll be here in a minute," said Inez. 
 
 " I'm so cold," I said. 
 
 She fetched an eiderdown from the bedroom, and 
 dropped it gently over my shoulders. 
 
 " That's better ! " I said. " I'm better, I'm a little 
 better." 
 
 So I was, but I only told her in order to prevent 
 her from worrying me with remedial offers. I de- 
 sired peace. Though I suffered less, I still knew that 
 I was dying. The mirror had confirmed that. 
 
 115 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 The doctor arrived. His cab was not overset en 
 route, nor did anything untoward happen to him. 
 He arrived, and within a space of time which even 
 to me did not appear outrageously' long. I caught 
 a murmur of voices outside the study door; Inez 
 ran to the door; and then the doctor entered, clad 
 in his eternal frock coat, and trousers that were 
 round, like stovepipes, quite ignoring the indispen- 
 sable crease down the front. He was the doctor of 
 the days of my poverty, and had a fatiguing and un- 
 remunerative suburban practice in the region of 
 Notting Hill. I had retained him in my prosperity, 
 partly because he was a very clever man of wide- 
 reaching experience, partly because I thought that 
 he " understood " me, partly because it appeared to 
 me unjust to deprive him of a client ; but chiefly be- 
 cause I appreciated his dry, crackling, sardonic tem- 
 perament and his curt attitude to humanity. More- 
 over, he had a secret passion for music. Once, when 
 I had called on him, we had played some pianoforte 
 duets together. If he could have concealed more ef- 
 fectually his sardonic pleasure in the droll spectacle 
 of mankind, he would have been a wealthy practi- 
 tioner, spending half his time in an electric brough- 
 am. His " bedside manner " could only please a 
 philosopher. He had reached the age of fifty, and 
 had lost nothing but hair. He always spoke in an 
 
 ii6 
 
THE DOCTOR 
 
 exceedingly quiet voice — so quiet sometimes as to 
 be scarcely audible. 
 
 I said nothing as he approached me, bending 
 down. 
 
 " Can you hear anything going on in your head ? " 
 he inquired mildly. 
 
 " Can't hear anything else," I replied grimly. 
 
 "Um!" 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Cardiac murmur," he said. He was examining 
 me. " No need to take your clothes off to examine 
 you. Could hear it a mile off. You'll be better 
 soon." Then he glanced at my wife through his 
 glittering gold-rimmed spectacles. " We shall want 
 some hot-water bags." 
 
 " I've had water put on to boil," said Inez. 
 
 " Got any mustard leaves ? " 
 
 She reflected. "Yes." 
 
 " Um ! You might let me have two or three hot- 
 water bags as quickly as you can and as hot as 
 you can." 
 
 " Must we get him to bed ? " she asked. 
 
 " No, no ! " said the doctor. " He mustn't be 
 moved yet." 
 
 And I thought: " What did I tell you? Didn't I 
 tell you?" 
 
 Inez departed. The doctor felt my pulse. 
 117 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 "What is it?" I asked. 
 
 "A hundred and sixty," he answered after a 
 pause. 
 
 " I mean — what's up ? " 
 
 " Well," he said, " angina pectoris. But you're 
 getting better every second. I suppose you've had 
 a shock, my boy ? What's happened ? " 
 
 I was disincHned to talk ; that is to say, I wished 
 only to ask questions, not to answer them. How- 
 ever, I said gloomily and reluctantly : 
 
 "Oh! A bally row!" 
 
 "Um!" 
 
 Inez and Marion, after marvelously little 
 delay, came with the apparatus of mustard leaves 
 and hot-water bags. Marion, in deshabille, was 
 wearing a garment which I recognized as a cast-off 
 dressing gown of Inez's. Her hair was loose. No 
 cap, no apron, no tight black frock! But the 
 spectacles ! 
 
 " That will do, Marion, for the present," said 
 Inez. 
 
 " Yes'm." 
 
 In a moment I was enveloped in mustard leaves, 
 hot-water bags, and rugs. And then all the pain 
 vanished, and it was as though the whole phenom- 
 enon of pain had been removed from the entire 
 earth. The surcease, I thought, was not due to the 
 ■ ii8 
 
THE DOCTOR 
 
 applications; but by chance it coincided with them. 
 I leaned voluptuously back in the easy-chair, and 
 smiled at the doctor. In my smile was something 
 of sheepishness, for I was ashamed of the helpless, 
 brutish condition to which acute pain had abased me. 
 I had an instinctive idea that I owed an apology 
 for it to fellow-creatures. 
 
 "By God!" I muttered. "By God!" 
 
 The noise was reverberating in my head as loudly 
 as ever. 
 
 " Yes," said the doctor in response to my curiosity 
 — he was sitting down now — " I can tell you pre- 
 cisely. It's all due to that severe endocarditis you 
 had when you had your rheumatic fever. Dilated 
 heart means a weak heart. If you'd stopped in bed 
 longer the valves might have recovered themselves. 
 But you wouldn't stop in bed, and they were perma- 
 nently affected." 
 
 He did not say this with reproach or with regret. 
 He merely recorded it as an impartial observer, that 
 quite naturally, quite humanly, I had disregarded his 
 urgent advice to remain in bed a long time after the 
 rheumatic fever. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later he left, saying that I 
 might go to bed as soon as I felt equal to the effort, 
 and that there was nothing else to be done. He 
 arranged with Inez that Marion should dress and 
 
 119 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 follow him to the surgery for a cardiac tonic which 
 he would prepare. 
 
 My wife and I then sat silent together. 
 
 In another half hour I announced that I could 
 and should go to bed. On her arm I walked easily 
 to the bedroom. I obstinately and even angrily in- 
 sisted upon undressing myself. I would only allow 
 her to take from me the various articles of attire as 
 I shed them. Yet I knew that I was wrong in thus 
 unnecessarily wasting my strength, and the clumsi- 
 ness of my movements was remarkable. . . . Then 
 I was in bed, lying on my back. The noise in my 
 head continued. I remained sure of my approaching 
 death. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE NIGHT 
 
 ALL had happened so swiftly that the mind 
 was, as it were, left breathless. I could see 
 this mental state in my wife's face. 
 
 " Better go to bed now," I suggested quietly; my 
 voice was fatigued and feeble. 
 
 She pursed out her lips, and raised her eyebrows, 
 at the same time slightly shaking her head, in the 
 expression of a negative. I comprehended that she 
 had endeavored to make this refusal kindly and per- 
 suasive, and that she wished to prove to me the 
 devotion which my condition had inspired in her. 
 Naturally, we could not converse, even had I been 
 sufficiently strong and sufficiently interested in life 
 to converse. The acute self-consciousness would in 
 any case have prevented us from an exchange of 
 ideas. Her confession, her bitterness, my cruel 
 irony, lay freshly between us. Impossible for us to 
 have been natural ! What could we have said ? We 
 were none the less bound together by my sudden 
 physical danger and need. She had to watch over 
 
 121 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 me, I had to depend upon her — and we could not 
 even look each other in the face! She remained at 
 the foot of my bed, not pouring hope into me from 
 brave, affectionate eyes, but with glance averted, 
 troubled and guilty. At length she sat down on a 
 chair. I could not see her head, but parts of her 
 ribboned dress were visible to me. I seemed to doze. 
 Then I heard gentle movements. She was changing 
 her tea gown for a plain dressing gown. Her ges- 
 tures had recovered all their grace. 
 
 I pitied her. My rancor, and the sense of my deep 
 injury, had expired. As I lay in a sort of ecstasy of 
 exhaustion, and watched her, I thought that she and I 
 had been together for innumerable years, that we had 
 been intensely intimate in very varied circumstances, 
 that each had a profound knowledge of the other's 
 character, and that all was now finished; the vivid, 
 lovely, and mournful chapter closed! ... A mel- 
 ancholy sweet and languorous as the summer 
 night impregnated me. I found a faint pleasure 
 in it. 
 
 And as I lazily watched her I thought : " I am 
 leaving you, and I am leaving you to unhappiness. 
 You will have money in plenty, you will be free, but 
 you yourself will be the continual source of your own- 
 unhappiness." I pictured a future for her, with Cap- 
 tain Hulse, for example. That idyl could never en- 
 
 122 
 
THE NIGHT 
 
 dure. Use would inevitably stale it till it withered. 
 And then what? Another idyl? And then what? 
 Then the dreaded approach of middle age; the de- 
 cadence of that wondrous body — supreme disaster! 
 What tragic mornings were in store for her ! What 
 tears, what humiliations! At forty, without the 
 strong moral support of a man who understands 
 her deeply, and cares for her, such a woman as Inez 
 is worse than dead. And I felt, despite her fierce 
 accusation that I had never understood her, that no 
 one would ever grasp the basis of her character as 
 I had grasped it, and that no one would be capable 
 of being so tolerant as I could have been — in the 
 future. . . . And then I pictured a different future 
 for her. She might, in a paroxysm of contrition, defi- 
 nitely repulse Johnnie. She might argue with her- 
 self, in her theatrical, sentimental way, that they two 
 could not link their hands across my tomb. She 
 might become a nurse, or even a nun. Yes, a nun, 
 fervent in protestations ! I saw her amidst conventual 
 gardens, endeavoring to convince herself that she 
 was content, and all the while the desire for opera 
 boxes and jewels and men burning her soul like 
 quicklime! I saw her in old age, fantastic and 
 ridiculous ! And it seemed to me that I alone could 
 have saved her. 
 
 These thoughts were not acute enough to be pain- 
 9 123 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ful. I was too tired, too resigned, to feel acutely. 
 But they gently emphasized my sadness. 
 
 A timid knock at the door. The spectacled girl 
 entered. This singular, baffling damsel was now 
 again fully clothed in her conventional black and 
 starched white, even to the cap and the cuffs. She 
 had brought the medicine, with glass and spoon, on 
 a salver. Inez deciphered the label on the bottle and 
 looked at the spoon. 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " I shall sit up, m'm," Marion whispered. 
 
 " I tell you what you might do," Inez whispered 
 back. " You might rest on the settee in the drawing- 
 room. Tell cook she can go to bed." 
 
 Marion bowed to the command and withdrew. 
 
 I objected to the medicine, but I knew that I 
 should be compelled to take it ; and I did so — a com- 
 plicated business. When it was over, I murmured 
 to Inez: 
 
 "Mirror!" 
 
 I was careful to say " mirror," instead of " glass," 
 lest she might think I wanted the medicine glass, 
 and fatiguing explanations might ensue. 
 
 " Oh, no ! " she said mildly. " You don't really 
 want that again." 
 
 " Yes, yes." 
 
 She had to bring it, and hold it above my eyes, 
 124 
 
THE NIGHT 
 
 as I lay gazing perpendicularly upward. I saw the 
 terribly drawn, apprehensive face, with its waxen 
 skin, once more. I thought : " They, too, since they 
 see this face, must know that I am dying." The 
 reverberations in my head had ceased. 
 
 She removed the mirror. 
 
 A moment afterwards I felt her startled eye upon 
 me. And I perceived that my hands were picking 
 aimlessly at the edge of the sheet. " That is just 
 what dying people do ! " I thought. I had not 
 noticed what I was doing ! How curious ! I ceased 
 picking at the sheet. 
 
 Then a blank! A long expanse of time! And 
 then I became aware gradually that I was, after all, 
 not in my own flat, and that, ill as I was, I must go 
 home instantly. And I tried to go home. I insisted 
 on going home. But inconceivably foolish persons 
 were preventing me. I talked very rapidly, now 
 loud, now soft, uttering the most extraordinary -mat- 
 ters, and at intervals stopping in my frenzied dis- 
 course to clarify obscure but important points, such 
 as my view of Johnnie Hulse's painting. Then I 
 fought for liberty to go home. I fought ferociously. 
 But I was gripped by two of these inconceivably 
 foolish persons. It was two to one. Then I was 
 shocked to discover that I was writhing on my own 
 bed, and that Inez and Marion, on either side of the 
 
 125 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 bed, were holding me by force of arms ! And how 
 athletic they were ! But they breathed heavily ! 
 
 I yielded, sinking back. 
 
 Another blank. 
 
 And I heard a voice, somehow familiar, saying : 
 
 " He may or he mayn't. We can do nothing 
 else." 
 
 And then, later, the same voice : 
 
 " It's because the eyes themselves are turned up- 
 ward, like into the forehead; the pupil is gone up 
 out of sight and so you can only see the white. He 
 may be like that for " 
 
 The voice stopped. It was the doctor's voice. 
 Strange! They had been telephoning, then, and 
 waiting, and the doctor had arrived again, and come 
 into the room, and I had known nothing! Marion 
 stood at attention in a corner of the room. I stirred. 
 The doctor came toward me with a faint smile. 
 Then I noticed another strange phenomenon. Some- 
 thing hot, damp, and stinging was pressing against 
 the calves of my legs. They had uncovered me, and 
 put poultices there, and covered me; and I had 
 known nothing! 
 
 " Here ! " murmured the doctor persuasively. 
 
 He put a small glass to my lips. 
 
 I smiled. It was the smile of one sardonic philos- 
 opher to another. 
 
 126 
 
THE NIGHT 
 
 After an interval the doctor departed, and Inez 
 followed him out of the room. Marion remained to 
 watch, respectfully glancing at me from moment to 
 moment. I was fully conscious and in my right 
 mind, but ineffably weak. Then Inez silently re- 
 turned, and, at a gesture from her, Marion with- 
 drew silently, leaving the door ajar. 
 
 Inez approached my bed. I let my head slide 
 slowly rightward, so that my right check was on 
 the pillow and my eye met hers. My right hand, 
 which lay on the sheet, moved scarce perceptibly 
 toward her. She took it, and dropped to her knees, 
 as I had once seen her drop to her knees before an 
 altar at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, and her eye 
 was level with mine. 
 
 "Did he tell you it's all up?" I questioned her. 
 My voice seemed like the wraith of a voice. 
 
 She shook her head, as it were by force of will. 
 And I saw moisture gathering in her bright feverish 
 eyes. It rose and rose, and then a shower of glisten- 
 ing drops burst and ran down her exquisite, pouting 
 cheeks. This was one of the most beautiful sights 
 that I ever witnessed. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 TOWARD OBLIVION 
 
 BETWEEN the twin beds was a small, square 
 table, and on the table stood an electric lamp 
 with a green-silk shade. The circle of light limited 
 by the shade included the edge of my bed and Inez's 
 face as she knelt. Beyond the confines of the circle 
 the whole chamber was in gloom. But I could 
 vaguely distinguish the contours and the tints of all 
 the beautiful furniture in the room, and I could recall 
 the fineness of the engravings and photogravures on 
 the unpatterned walls. And there was Inez's long- 
 plumed hat perched on the silver candlestick ! The 
 color of the eiderdown, which had been drawn away 
 somewhat and cast over the foot of the bed, was a 
 reddish purple, braided with green : it showed richly, 
 amidst the general severity of tone, like a piece of 
 rhetoric. I mention these matters because I then 
 savored them with pleasure — a feeling faint but 
 agreeable. I thought that, in dying, it was an ad- 
 vantage to be surrounded by phenomena that could 
 not wound — could only soothe — ^the glazing eye. 
 
 128 
 
TOWARD OBLIVION 
 
 Inez rose, looked at me for an instant, and moved 
 away into the gloom. She appeared to me extra- 
 ordinary healthy, in a state of high physical ef- 
 ficiency. She was like an incarnation of perfectly 
 coordinated energy. And I thought what a won- 
 derful and lovely thing was a sound body in good 
 health ! Although this phenomenon, too, pleased me, 
 it also inspired in me a certain feeble resentment. I, 
 ruined, did in fact resent the active competence of 
 that organized frame. It struck me as insolent. 
 And yet a few hours previously my own body had 
 displayed the same insolence of power. And my un- 
 doing was due to an irrational and disobedient im- 
 patience after rheumatic fever a year ago ! I would, 
 then, in my growing strength, quit my bed. And 
 now, as a consequence, I could not quit it, should 
 never quit it. Curiously strange, the inexorability of 
 nature ! 
 
 Exactly opposite the foot of my bed was the door 
 leading to the study. This door was wide open, and 
 the vista of the study, ending in a French window, 
 met my eyes when they came to rest in the natural 
 position of repose. No lamp burned in the study. 
 There were dim hints of glossy reflections, and the 
 window made an oblong of bluish twilight. The 
 window was ajar; its two wings stirred slightly from 
 time to time, and the white lace curtains stirred, 
 
 129 
 
THE GLIMPSE - 
 
 bellying capriciously and then flattening out, ac- 
 cording to the mild, warm gusts of the July night. 
 Through the upper part of the window I could 
 discern a patch of silver in the sky, of an exqui- 
 site quality of color. I had previously observed 
 this patch from the balcony of the drawing-room, 
 when I had looked dow'n at the departure of John 
 and Mary. It was the pale gleaming vestige of a 
 magnificent sunset, reluctant to expire, islanded 
 amidst dark clouds in the highest heavens. I 
 thought : " That silver cannot burn there through 
 the night. It must fade." And I waited for it to 
 fade. And it would not fade. I closed my eyes 
 for immense periods, and looked again, expecting 
 the radiance to be gone. But it was always there, 
 making the window wonderful. 
 
 Everything was still, silent, enchanted. And out 
 of the silence, like bubbles floating upward to the 
 surface of a pool and breaking there, came the 
 solemn tick-tick of the antique clock in the vestibule, 
 dominating the subdued life of the flat, and count- 
 ing eternity. I thought of the cook, sleeping I knew 
 not where, and the enigmatic Marion stretched on a 
 settee in the dark drawing-room (a woman, be- 
 neath that tight black frock), and Inez, strong and 
 beautiful, indistinctly near me somewhere in the 
 green-shadowed chamber. 
 
 130 
 
TOWARD OBLIVION 
 
 I saw my hand twitching and toying with the edge 
 of the sheet again, and I stopped it. 
 
 It was a pity that the spell that brooded over the 
 flat would be broken by my death ! A pity that the 
 subdued and apprehensive life of the flat could not 
 remain thus forever in its beautiful immobility. The 
 thought of the harsh and ugly disturbances insepa- 
 rable from a funeral, and of the probable evacuation 
 of the flat, and of the invasion of its chill emptiness 
 by loud-voiced, insincerely disparaging flat hunters 
 — ^this wounded and worried me. However, there 
 would be plenty of money for Inez. She would be 
 put to no shifts. . . . Strange that none of these 
 people believed that my immediate death was sure ! 
 They all hoped, with a genuine hope that was nigh 
 faith, for my recovery. Even the doctor had faith. 
 Otherwise my sister would have been summoned. 
 But they feared. I alone saw with certainty the fu- 
 ture. And I alone was calm and untroubled. 
 
 Another long period seemed to elapse. But prob- 
 ably my conceptions of time were seriously falsified. 
 I heard the clock ticking; yet, though its habit was 
 to chime the quarters, I never heard it strike. Prob- 
 ably also I had a very inadequate notion of the com- 
 plexity of the treatment to which I was being sub- 
 jected. I seemed to have disconnected glimpses of 
 intricate operations which kept Inez busy about my 
 
 131 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 bed. Once, after having adjusted the coverings, she 
 murmured to me : 
 
 " Are you comfortable ? " 
 
 And I endeavored to nod. I must have succeeded 
 in nodding. Then my head slipped to one side. 
 
 All I wished was to be left quiescent in the peace 
 which was enwrapping me in heavier and heavier 
 folds. I had no regrets for the past, and no qualms 
 about the future. My life did not pass before me 
 in a phantasmagoria of self-judging. I had no satis- 
 faction concerning things done, nor did I grieve for 
 things undone ; nor did my soul weep over lost op- 
 portunities. I did not wander in the remote caverns 
 of infancy, unvisited for decades. I saw my career 
 in no new light. I was unaware of any remorse. 
 The solemnity of the crisis in my immortality scarce- 
 ly oppressed me at all. I thought : " I am going ! I 
 am going ! It is just as well ! What a cutting of the 
 knot ! Let me depart ! " Did I say I had no qualms 
 for the future? Scarcely true! The great void of 
 my indifiference was shot through at intervals by thin, 
 lancinating flashes of fear, of an unknown terror. 
 . . . After all, if the passage into the new conscious- 
 ness on the other side of death should somehow 
 correspond in dread with the legendary superstitions 
 of mankind ! If the mighty power waiting beyond 
 the horizon should, after all, be vindictive, should 
 
 132 
 
TOWARD OBLIVION 
 
 even be but scientifically just! . . . Then the flash 
 was gone. I thought : " I shall soon know." And 
 there was a certain feeble adventurous nonchalance 
 in my mood — the insolence, at once titanic and pert, 
 of the human soul before an unimaginable danger ! 
 These sensations that I describe were unimportant 
 in the sum of my consciousness, which mainly con- 
 sisted in a fierce physical egotism caused by exhaus- 
 tion of the body. My body had my brain in subjec- 
 tion. I knew that my face was not drawn and 
 anxious now. I knew that it could express nothing 
 but the intense need of repose. All other considera- 
 tions receded. I must rest. Sleep, and a state pro- 
 founder than sleep ! Leave me, intruders, torturers ! 
 And if you will not, I defy you to disturb me. I 
 sink, as it were, downward on a canine sigh. By my 
 side the lamp throws its bright ring on the carpet. 
 Far in front the mysterious window shimmers in 
 vague, translucent silver. ... All ! . . . The man 
 lost in the snow-veiled Alpine pass, seized by slumber 
 as by an opiate, insensately fighting his rescuers for 
 the incomparablg bliss of oblivion — behold there my 
 image ! 
 
BOOK II 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 AWAKING 
 
 THIS is what I awoke to : 
 I was looking at my bed. My brain at first 
 worked with much difficulty. It reasoned very 
 slowly. Nevertheless, the argument was convinc- 
 ing : " I am looking at the bed. Therefore I am not 
 in the bed." I saw the bed framed in a small oblong, 
 of which the greater length was vertical. This ob- 
 long was the doorway between the bedroom and my 
 study. Hence I had arrived, by some means, in the 
 study. I was, in fact, near the open window. I 
 had a slight sensation of chilliness, though I knew 
 that the night was warm. 
 
 A man lay on the bed. He was a big man, as I 
 could judge from the outlines of his shoulders under 
 the sheet. And his head was large. His face showed 
 white; the eyes were wide open and staring fixedly 
 at the ceiling; the lower jaw had fallen, limp, so 
 that the mouth was open in a senile, rather idiotic 
 
 134 
 
AWAKING 
 
 way. A man of forty or so. I was prevented by 
 the intervening foot of the bed from seeing more 
 than the upper half of what lay on it, and by the 
 dimensions of the doorway from seeing anything in 
 the bedroom except the bed. I heard a rush of foot- 
 steps, and then the electric light over the bed was 
 turned on, illuminating crudely the face of the man, 
 whose eyelids, however, did not blink. Then my 
 wife appeared within the field of my vision, with the 
 hand mirror, which she polished carefully on a 
 corner of the eiderdown. Thereupon she held it 
 downward over the mouth and nostrils of the man 
 for a long time, and then examined it, first under the 
 ceiling light and afterwards under the lamp on the 
 little table. Parts of her — ^her head, an arm, a por- 
 tion of skirt — ^were continually passing in and out 
 of the oblong. She was extremely agitated. I _ 
 scarcely recognized her by her features. 
 
 Nor, though it may astound, did I recognize the 
 man on the bed. An appreciable period elapsed be- 
 fore I even began vaguely to realize that the body 
 on the bed was mine. I had never seen myself save 
 in a glass, which puts the left to the right and the 
 right to the left, thus changing all the relations of 
 the features. I had to reason out the identity of the 
 body. It could be no other; therefore, it was mine. 
 
 And then the idea shot through me — not as a 
 135 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 result of ratiocination, but as a swift fundamental 
 perception of the instinct : 
 
 " I'm dead ! This is being dead ! I've died ! " 
 
 Terror clutched and loosed me; retired and then 
 approached slowly from all sides to possess me. I 
 felt the start, the shiver, the momentary cold creep- 
 ing of the skin on the spine — an instant of ineffable 
 anguish ; then numbness ; then the gradual return of 
 anguish. A sailor marooned on a desert islet, and 
 newly aware of what had happened to him, might 
 feebly conceive my state. Indescribable ! Sickening ! 
 
 I still had some sort of a physical organism, pat- 
 terned apparently on the old, but differing in deep 
 ways which, however, I was not curious enough to 
 consider. I was still I. It was the relic on the bed 
 that was not I. 
 
 My wife, after disappearing, came back into the 
 oblong with a pair of scissors. She cut a hole in the 
 pillow and drew from it a feather of down, which 
 she cautiously poised on the lips of that body. The 
 down did not tremble. Then she bared the breast 
 of the body on the bed, and, bending, laid her ear 
 upon the region of the heart. I could see her eyes 
 blinking as she intensely listened. She was looking 
 directly at me. The bedroom was brilliantly lit, and 
 the study derived considerable light from it. I ought 
 to have been quite plain, as an object. Even had the 
 
 136 
 
AWAKING 
 
 study been dark, I ought to have been notable as a 
 silhouette against the silvery luminance of the win- 
 dow. Yet Inez did not see me. 
 ' I wanted to cry out : " Inez ! " But I could make 
 no sound. Nor could I move. That is to say, I 
 could move a few inches in any direction, up or 
 down, forward, backward, sideways, as easily as one 
 moves in water, but I could not quit the spot where I 
 was. 
 
 Inez straightened herself, gave a brief sob, and 
 stood undecided by the bed. I endeavored to attract 
 her attention by signs — by I knew not what, by the 
 violence of my desire to communicate with her. But 
 I could do nothing. Once she turned sharply, as if 
 startled, and looked straight at me through the door- 
 way. I strove now more frantically than ever to in- 
 tercept that glance. Useless ! She did not see me. 
 She would not see me. 
 
 She passed out of the oblong. I then noticed a 
 form floating over the bed. It resembled me — it 
 resembled my body — in shape, but it was of a pale, 
 grayish, heliotrope color. It appeared to float as if 
 in water. " My God ! " I thought. "' How often 
 am I to be multiplied ? " I was aghast with horror, 
 consternation, panic, and an awful bewilderment. 
 I could explain nothing to myself. I was terrorized 
 and lost. And, moreover, the floating imitation of 
 
 137 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 me was obscene; the body below it was obscene. 
 Understand me : when I say " obscene," I mean com- 
 pletely offensive and disastrous to the sight: I use 
 the word in no limited sense. It was fatally shocking 
 that that disgusting relic and that uncanny fluid 
 shape should be there between the homely, earthly, 
 comprehensible, decent electric light and the Hepple- 
 white bedstead. 
 
 I thought : 
 
 " Dead ? Yes. What ' they ' call dead ! " 
 
 But I knew then that there was no such catas- 
 trophe as corresponded with your notion of death. 
 There was, however, something more formidable, 
 which we had not suspected : the forced simultaneous 
 perception of disparate phenomena. This is the 
 most shattering, if not the most desolating experi- 
 ence that the universe holds. Believe me ! 
 
 I heard the voice of Inez : 
 
 "Marion!" 
 
 It was a voice charged with significance, and it 
 told Marion the great fact. I heard a sleepy groan 
 in the drawing-room, and dull heavy movements, 
 becoming hastier. And then both women appeared 
 within the oblong. Marion still wore her black frock 
 and she was mechanically tying her apron behind. 
 They gazed at that body on the bed, and at each 
 other, and at the body again. They gazed at that 
 
 138 
 
AWAKING 
 
 body, commiserating and awestruck, as if it was my- 
 self that they were gazing at. Neither spoke. I 
 wanted to rouse them to their error, so stupid, gro- 
 tesque, and tragic. But I was helpless. I was in the 
 most desperate need of sympathy, of moral succor; 
 and they ignored me, spilling their facile tears on a 
 mass of obscene and senseless matter. They were 
 blind to such a point that they could not even discern 
 the third " me " floating idly above their heads on a 
 level with Brangwyn's large etching of London 
 Bridge. 
 
 Inez told what she had done. Marion ventured 
 to bend a little closer to the body. 
 
 " I have heard," she said deferentially, " that if 
 you put a full glass of water on the chest you can 
 tell for sure. But perhaps you wouldn't care to, 
 m m. 
 
 By this time her apron was duly fastened. 
 
 First Inez and then the servant passed out of the 
 oblong, and I caught the sound of water being 
 poured from one vessel into another. And Inez re- 
 appeared holding at arm's length, and balancing 
 with precautions, a tumbler of water. 
 
 " Turn down the sheet," she commanded. 
 
 " Oh, ma'am ! I never dare ! " exclaimed Marion, 
 and burst fairly into hysteric sobs. 
 
 With a slight gesture of scornful superiority, Inez 
 10 139 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 deposited the glass on the corner of the table, turned 
 down the sheet, took the glass again, and gingerly 
 lowered it on to the chest of that body. I could 
 see from their faces that both women imagined 
 themselves to be engaged in an operation dreadful 
 and momentous. To me it was merely absurd in an 
 exasperating degree. The ridiculousness of their 
 maneuver affronted my sense of propriety. From 
 either side of the bed they stared as if spellbound 
 at the preposterous tumbler lodged on that fleshly 
 residue. I had never since my youth been able to 
 envisage any act whatsoever as blasphemous. When 
 people talked of blasphemy, I could never even fan- 
 cifully reproduce their feelings in myself. Yet, then, 
 the figures of Inez and the maid, and the decaying 
 mass between them, and the meaningless tumbler, 
 constituted for me,, in some way, a blasphemous tab- 
 leau vivant: the most monstrous spectacle that I 
 had ever seen. 
 
 " No! Nothing! " Inez breathed. 
 
 There was not the slightest vibration on the sur- 
 face of the tumbler, which she at length removed. 
 
 They were obsessed, both of them, by the majesty 
 and solemnity of death. So much was to be seen in 
 their impressionable faces, and audible in their 
 voices, and visible again in their movements. They 
 felt themselves to be alone in the flat with the dead, 
 
 140 
 
AWAKING 
 
 and they looked timidly askance at shadows, and 
 started at faint unanticipated noises. Obviously the 
 whole flat was alive for them with the little creeping 
 presences that are supposed to circle round a corpse. 
 And yet I could not force into their consciousness 
 the fact that I was behind them, helpless and deso- 
 late. And they remained extraordinarily unaware 
 of the weird counterfeit floating above them. I was 
 in despair of my impotence, and outraged by the 
 obstinacy of their error. They deemed themselves 
 alone in the flat with the corpse ; but they were alone 
 in the flat with me ; the corpse was utterly negligible ; 
 the corpse did not exist. And they were wasting 
 upon it their sympathy, their respect, their awe. 
 This was what most deeply perturbed me. 
 
 " I'd better telephone for the doctor, m'm, hadn't 
 I ? " whispered Marion. Terror was gripping them 
 tighter. 
 
 " What's the use ? " murmured Inez. " It would 
 only spoil the poor man's night for nothing. He 
 warned me — to be prepared ! " 
 
 " Yes'm," said Marion meekly. " But that's what 
 doctors are for. By rights he ought to be fetched." 
 
 She had her way. 
 
 I heard her presently enunciating with trembling 
 distinctness the figures of a telephone number. After 
 a time she came back to the bedroom and I heard 
 
 141 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 her say that the exchange said that they could get no 
 reply from the doctor. Silence. Neither Inez nor 
 Marion was now within the oblong. I noticed that 
 the grayish heliotrope apparition had risen higher 
 from the bed, so that part of it was already hidden 
 from me by the top of the doorway. Soon it van- 
 ished altogether, upward out of my field of vision. 
 
 Then I heard the chink of coins. 
 
 " Have you got a penny, Marion? " 
 
 " A penny, ma'am ? " 
 
 " I've only got one. His eyes must be closed." 
 
 No! The spectacled girl had not got a penny. 
 My mood became bitterly ironic. There was a con- 
 siderable to-do about the second penny. And I ached 
 for them to finish the episode. I knew that in a 
 drawer of my desk lay over two shillings' worth 
 of coppers ; for I had made a point of storing cop- 
 pers; it was one of my little tricks of habit always 
 to have change adequate for every emergency. Inez 
 also knew of this store of copper. But in her agita- 
 tion she forgot it. So the difficulty of the other 
 penny persisted. I wanted to recall to her that which 
 she had forgotten. I longed with an intense longing 
 to direct her attention to the drawer. But I could 
 not. My impotence was appalling. 
 
 " I suppose I can use half a crown ?" I heard Inez 
 mutter doubtfully. 
 
 142 
 
AWAKING 
 
 The girl ventured no reply to this suggestion. 
 
 Inez appeared within the oblong once more. She 
 had in one hand a handkerchief folded crosswise like 
 a muffler, and in the other two coins. She ap- 
 proached that body, and again put her ear to its 
 breast and listened intently, and again stared straight 
 at me with blinking, unseeing eyes. 
 
 Then she passed the handkerchief under that 
 fallen jaw and so lifted the jaw and tied the hand- 
 kerchief in a knot at the top of the head of that body. 
 There was a sob from the invisible maid. And with 
 her delicate fingers Inez drew down the eyelids of 
 that body, and put a penny on one and half a crown 
 on the other. And she straightened the arms of that 
 body. She seemed to be acquainted with these singu- 
 lar rites much better than I was. 
 
 " I shall go and tell cook, m'm," said the de- 
 termined voice of the maid. 
 
 I heard footsteps, and the opening of a door far 
 off. 
 
 Suddenly Inez threw herself down by the bed, be- 
 fore that body, as before an altar, and hid her face 
 in the eiderdown, and wept. 
 
 " I did love you ! I did love you ! " she cried in 
 stifled and broken tones. She was pouring out her 
 soul in a passionate ecstasy of repentant grief. But 
 she was pouring it out to that futile, obscene, and 
 
 143 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 negligible mass on the bed, that refuse no more 
 capable of response than a barrow load of earth. It 
 was it that she loved. And I, alive, tingling, isolate, 
 and agonized for lack of human sympathy, stood 
 helpless and disregarded within a few feet of her, in 
 the twilight of the study. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 SOUNDS OF NIGHT 
 
 NOW, as, slightly waving like a stalk, I stood 
 by the window, a feeling of acute and fright- 
 ful loneliness enveloped me as it were in an icy sheet. 
 I was solitary in the universe. I was invisible and 
 I was forgotten. I had no place in the world, no 
 share in life, nothing that was mine. The purposes 
 of nature had ejected me from humanity. It was 
 as though humanity were a fortified city, and the 
 gates had been shut on me, and I was baffled by 
 unscalable smooth walls, beating against their 
 stone with my hands. Any physical torture would 
 have been preferable to the horror caused by this 
 feeling of ostracized solitude. It devastated my 
 soul, laying waste the whole of it. 
 
 Marion came within the oblong of my vision, 
 and, without a word, put her hands on Inez, and 
 gently raised her up from the bedside and led her 
 away beyond my view. And Inez yielded, unre- 
 sisting. Here were two human beings, sympa- 
 thetic, mutually comprehending, relying on each 
 
 145 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 other, sure of each other. And the tie of Uving 
 humanity which joined them seemed to me to be 
 the most beautiful and the profoundest that could 
 be conceived. The simple fact that they were alive 
 together surpassed in importance every other fact 
 in their relationship. 
 
 The next moment the electric .light was extin- 
 guished in the bedroom. But in the diffused clar- 
 ity of the summer night I could still discern the 
 monstrous shape of that body on the bed. I ob- 
 served the birth of a light in the drawing-room, and 
 heard voices. Then I heard the clock chime and 
 strike two. It was at this point that I first per- 
 ceived, in the midst of my spiritual pangs, how the 
 sensitiveness of my auditory nerves was increas- 
 ing. I could hear all the clocks of London strik- 
 ing, separately and distinctly — so it appeared to 
 me. Certainly hundreds of thousands of clocks. 
 Not merely the deep-sounding boom of cathe- 
 drals, abbeys, parHaments, and palaces, but the lit- 
 tle hasty clocks of small interiors. I could, for 
 instance, distinguish every clock on every floor of 
 Palace Court Mansions. I could even hear the 
 ticking of alarm clocks in the bedrooms of serv- 
 ants, which was indeed louder than the soft dis- 
 cretion of the gongs of many clocks in larger 
 chambers. This innumerable chorus of clocks 
 
 146 
 
SOUNDS OF NIGHT 
 
 continued for a long time, gradually decreasing in 
 volume but never quite dying away. Its impres- 
 siveness was uncanny. The living speak of the un- 
 canniness of the dead. It does not occur to them 
 that manifestations of human existence may be 
 uncanny to the dead. 
 t? That sensation of the uncanny ceased. I could 
 hear, now, in the silence of the clocks, all the noc- 
 turnal stir of London. I could hear the sound of 
 sleepers and of those who did not sleep: breathings, 
 restless motions, murmurings, moans, groans, 
 sharp cries, kisses, pattering of bare feet, striking 
 of matches. I could hear the regular dropping of 
 some dangerous medicine into a glass, and a quiet 
 voice counting the drops, and the gurgle of swal- 
 lowing, and the sigh. And I could hear laughter, 
 and the creeping of pens over paper, and the vi- 
 brating roar of immense machinery, and the abrupt 
 clanging of oven doors, and the march of sentinels, 
 and the slither of dancing; and prayers. . . . The 
 catalogue would be interminable. There was no 
 confusion in my mind. I had a million ears, inde- 
 pendently functioning. 
 
 And out of the vast material of sound I seemed 
 to be able to reproduce for myself all the interiors 
 of London. I saw attics, and rows of attics, where 
 girls were sleeping uneasily, huddled together in 
 
 147 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the attitudes of exhaustion; and their black frocks 
 and black aprons and elastic-tethered scissors were 
 hung upon nails or cast carelessly on chairs; and 
 by their sides the little round fussy alarm clocks 
 with indicators pointing to half past five, six, half 
 past six, seven; and on their tiny dressing tables 
 photographs of men or of other girls. And I could 
 see rooms which resembled kitchens as much as bed- 
 rooms, with men and women and children crowded 
 on the bed, and under the bed, and in every corner, 
 and a baby in a box, and all stertorously breathing, 
 save perhaps one who lay awake. And I could 
 see immense chambers, with one bed, or two, like 
 islands rising out of smooth seas of carpet, and 
 on the beds something just human that moved or 
 did not move. And miles upon miles of plain aver- 
 age rooms, astoundingly alike in their appliances 
 of comfort, their ornaments, and the visages and 
 postures of their occupants; all suspended on a 
 groundwork of empty rooms about a dozen feet 
 above the level of the roadways. Nearly all dark, 
 yet not quite dark! Here and there a bright light: 
 a man writing, or reading; several men talking; a 
 solitary bended pale woman sewing — stitch, stitch, 
 monotonously under a lamp; yes, and even white 
 young girls sewing doggedly and yawning! Then 
 the prisons, black, and patterned into cells like a 
 
 148 
 
SOUNDS OF NIGHT 
 
 chessboard. And the other prisons — ^barracks, ris- 
 ing floor above black floor, similarly patterned. 
 And the other prisons — hospitals, hotels, rising 
 floor above floor, similarly patterned, but illumi- 
 nated faintly, and alive with special activities. And 
 then enormous cellars, bathed in bluish radiance, 
 and filled with huge, shaking, whirring machines 
 about which men scurried to and fro like ants. 
 
 Behind walls, all that ! Secure within walls ! But 
 the roadways themselves — leagues of lighted ave- 
 nues, intersecting, curving, slanting, climbing — 
 these, too, seemed to be homely and secure under 
 the guardianship of their quiet lamps. They all 
 led to the inner and double safety and companion- 
 ship of interiors. And the rare people that paced 
 them on calm, regular feet or swam swiftlier over 
 them on wheels, had the consciousness of this sol- 
 ace on their faces. And even those who wandered 
 aimlessly, who crouched on doorsteps, or lolled 
 on the iron benches of squares and embankments, 
 even these were — ^how shall I put it? — at home in 
 their homelessness. The walls of which the in- 
 terior sides protected the sleepers, protected the 
 outcasts also by their human familiarity. 
 
 I alone was solitary. I alone was cut off— by 
 an impassable and uncomprehensible barrier. . . . 
 I was within walls. I was in my house. I was 
 
 149 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 near my wife and my servants; surrounded by the 
 agreeable toys of my daily existence. Yes! But 
 that was naught. And, moreover, I was not after 
 all within walls, not near my wife and my posses- 
 sions. I was nowhere. I had no relation to the 
 human world. Sponged off it! And a place in the 
 human world seemed to me to be the one object 
 worthy of desire. In my tragic, unsuccored, hope- 
 less loneliness there was not one of these milHons 
 of human creatures whose burden I would not have 
 seized had I had the power. Not a starving 
 wretch, not a beaten child, not a pregnant spinster, 
 not a drunken beast, not a murderer, a thief, a 
 shamed deceiver, not a bereaved lover, not a con- 
 demned invaHd, no, not even a gloved lackey, with 
 whom I would not have exchanged lots. I would 
 have jumped to become a dog or a cab horse. The 
 freezing blast that moans in the hollow between 
 two worlds nipped me, and I was naked to it. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 Marion's thoughts 
 
 THE telephone bell sharply awoke the flat 
 with a prolonged silvery ring, rising and 
 falling several times. There was a stir of move- 
 ment in the drawing-room, and a door opened. 
 Then I heard the conversation on the telephone. I 
 could hear it all, both my wife's voice and the voice 
 that whispered answers in her ear. A few minutes 
 previously I might have been able to hear that 
 answering voice in the very place where it spoke 
 — away at Notting Hill. But already my hearing 
 was less sensitive and sure than it had been. The 
 special faculty was passing from me, as myste- 
 riously as it had come. 
 
 " How is the patient? " asked the whispering 
 voice, with an accent of pleasant optimism. 
 
 " Is that you, doctor? " The voice of Inez 
 shook. 
 
 " Yes. I am called out. Just going. I thought 
 I'd inquire before I left." 
 
 " He is gone." 
 
 " What do you say? " 
 
 151 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 "Gone!" 
 
 "Ah!" The tone of the faint whisper in her 
 ear was suddenly changed. 
 
 " I should like you to come, doctor, if you don't 
 mind." 
 
 " Was it sudden? " 
 
 " Yes. Quite sudden. . . . About an hour ago; 
 I should Hke you to come round, if you could, just 
 to see." 
 
 " Yes. I'll come as soon as I can. Good-by." 
 
 I listened with attentive ear to that short collo- 
 quy, as though it concerned me, as though it had a 
 real interest for me. There was something sinister 
 in the brevities of the doctor issuing, with a curious 
 effect as of two rough surfaces being rubbed to- 
 gether, out of the heart of the little disc into the 
 soft ear of Inez. "Ah!" he had emitted, upon 
 learning that I was gone; and that was all! 
 
 I ceased to be quite so preoccupied with my 
 terrible loneliness, and my thoughts gradually 
 grouped themselves around the immediate future 
 of Inez. I felt that in my absence everything that 
 had to be done would be done wrongly or done 
 clumsily. I foresaw ghastly sins against my desires 
 in connection with the interment of that body. 
 And I wished intensely to communicate to some- 
 body, in all exact details, how the affair should be 
 
 152 
 
MARION'S THOUGHTS 
 
 conducted so that it might not offend my sense 
 of propriety. I knew too well that Inez would err 
 on the side of fiagrancy and spectacular emotion. If 
 I had had anything to sacrifice (which I had not), I 
 would have eagerly sacrificed it in order to reduce 
 to a minimum the spiritual ineptitudes incident to 
 a customary funeral. And although I knew that 
 that body was nothing but unorganized matter in 
 the shape of an organism, I was animated by a 
 keen, vindictive repugnance to it. I blamed and 
 hated it for the blindness of those who already had 
 comported themselves, and those who soon would 
 comport themselves, in front of it ceremoniously, 
 honoring it as if it were myself — ^while I . . . 
 
 And I thought of all the mistakes that Inez 
 would commit in relation to my estate, and the 
 trouble she would unnecessarily raise up for her- 
 self, and the disaster which she might make of the 
 remainder of her life. And I wondered what Mary 
 would do without her brother. I wanted to inter- 
 fere in a thousand things, the very least a.s well as 
 the very greatest. I burned in a fever of anxieties 
 and apprehensions about matters which I could in 
 no manner influence and which could in no manner 
 influence my lot. The sheer absurdity of most hu- 
 man activities worried me, and my inability to pre- 
 vent that absurdity. 
 
 153 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 This obsession enlarged. And suddenly with a 
 strange, disconcerting abruptness, I had a view of 
 the whole human race engaged in the business of 
 moving matter from one place to another. These 
 creatures, to whom I was now foreign and superior 
 (in my fearful solitude), seemed to exhaust them- 
 selves solely in this crude, physical task. It was 
 not merely ships, railways, trams, omnibuses, cabs, 
 lifts, and the post. It was shops, mines, restau- 
 rants, water, light, drainage — everything that was 
 deemed important in the important assemblages of 
 men. Nearly the entire contents of every newspa- 
 per every day were devoted to this ridiculous ques- 
 tion of moving matter from one place to another; 
 it constituted nearly the whole of human history. 
 And I was astonished that I had never before been 
 struck by the huge, obvious fact. The more I con- 
 templated it the more absurd it seemed to me, and 
 the lower my estimate of humanity fell. And I 
 said to myself, astounded, shocked: "Why! Spir- 
 itual evolution has not begun — has not begun with 
 them! Cannot begin until they come to see what 
 now I see so plainly! They are children! They are 
 navvies and porters ! " I was overwhelmed by the 
 wonder of the generalization about humanity 
 which I had discovered. 
 
 All this was pushed violently out of my mind by 
 154 
 
MARION'S THOUGHTS 
 
 the opening of the door between the study and the 
 drawing-room. Instinctively I shrank back as far 
 as I could into the embrasure of the window. I 
 thought: " I shall be discovered! " And whereas 
 a while ago I was desolate at the failure of either 
 woman to see me, now I was afraid of being seen. 
 I did not wish to be seen. I trembled at the possi- 
 bility of being seen. 
 
 It was Marion who entered, closing the door 
 cautiously behind her. She turned on the electric 
 light, and looked at the window. But she did not 
 see me. Her eyes hesitated on the window. I 
 thought, shaking: " Supposing she decides to shut 
 it and comes toward me, what will happen then? " 
 For I could not escape from the immediate vicin- 
 ity of the window. However, her eye left the win- 
 dow and wandered to the little door between the 
 study and the bedroom. This door had remained 
 open, and as Marion advanced into the room she 
 could see what I saw in the bedroom. She stood 
 still a moment, and then, resolute, went to the little 
 door and shut it. Obviously she was relieved when 
 she had done so. Then she sat down in ray easy- 
 chair — the most comfortable chair in the flat, the 
 chair in which I took my after-lunch nap and which 
 was strictly consecrate to me. And she dropped 
 her head against one of the ear flaps, and stretched 
 n 155 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 out her legs. She was still wearing her starched 
 apron, but no cap. Then she took off her specta- 
 cles, dropped them in one of the twin pockets of her 
 apron, and closed her eyes. 
 
 Evidently she had deemed it contrary to eti- 
 quette that she should lose consciousness in the 
 presence of her mistress. And so, fatigue master- 
 ing her, she had crept into the study. 
 
 Now, soon after Marion's advent, I began to 
 lack confidence in the reliability of my senses. At 
 any rate, the reports of my senses confused me and 
 dizzied my brain. When you stand before a large 
 shop-window filled with dark-colored goods, the 
 images of the street behind you mingle with the 
 objects in the window. And according to the in- 
 tent of your mind, those images will fade or bright- 
 en. If you wish strongly to see the objects, the 
 images will disappear. If you devote your vision 
 to the images, the objects will disappear. 
 
 I was aware of partial, fleeting gaps in the phys- 
 ical continuity of the room — gaps that yawned 
 and closed again. It was as though something — 
 nay, a whole series of phenomena — was intermit- 
 tently breaking through the physical. phenomena. 
 
 My spine shivered, struck cold. I was on an- 
 other threshold. 
 
 .What was the nature of the phenomena which 
 156 
 
MARION'S THOUGHTS 
 
 were battling with the physical phenomena for the 
 possession of my senses, I could not discern. But 
 I saw beautiful flashes of color, scarcely irides- 
 cences, but the tints of iridescence. Then I per- 
 ceived" that Marion was enveloped in color. I 
 thrilled. She was surrounded by a chromatic form, 
 somewhat larger than herself, otherwise exactly 
 corresponding with herself. I could see her within 
 it, as a sort of large nucleus of it. The colors, 
 which were continually modified, were not suscep- 
 tible of description. They were colors that I had 
 never seen before. I experienced no surprise that 
 I had never seen them before. I felt that I could 
 not have seen them before. I knew, too, that that 
 envelope (or should I call it emanation?) which 
 surrounded Marion always surrounded her; and 
 that it had been invisible only to eyes that could 
 not see it. Even now I could see it but dimly, but 
 vaguely. If I centralized my vision on the physi- 
 cal body of Marion, the encircling form almost dis- 
 appeared, but I could not lose the body in the 
 steadfast contemplation of its envelope. 
 
 After a period of this exquisite amazement I ob- 
 served, very faintly at first, that small shapes were 
 escaping one by one from that part of the chro- 
 matic envelope which surrounded Marion's head. 
 Tliey floated away. Not bubbles! Shapes more 
 
 157 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 complex than spheres, shapes showing design, and 
 the persistence of one design with minor varia- 
 tions! At first I could not follow them in their 
 airy flights. But they grew clearer to me. I traced 
 them one after another to a corner of the ceiling. 
 Presently I could distinguish the gradual building 
 of each of them in the recesses of that chromatic 
 envelope, the body being momentarily lost to 
 sight. 
 
 Again I thrilled. 
 
 I thought, solemnly ecstatic: "They are her 
 thoughts! " 
 
 And I was drenched in an afifrighted pleasure, 
 caused by this unique and lovely experience. It 
 was as if my joy bedewed me. 
 
 I could see other small forms, but faintlier, glid- 
 ing about the room, nearer to me. I braced my 
 volition and my powers to follow further the dis- 
 appearing forms born of Marion's form. And, by 
 perseverance, I watched them through the ceiling 
 to a higher floor, where, in a small room (whose 
 outlines were misty to me), they hovered caressing- 
 ly around another chromatic human form that lay 
 on a trestle bed. Within the colored envelope was 
 the body of a youth. I recognized his face. I had 
 often seen him menially engaged about the ex- 
 terior of Palace Court Mansions. He was, or 
 
 158 
 
MARION'S THOUGHTS 
 
 seemed to me now, extraordinarily handsome, and 
 his attitude was distinguished by the graceful dig- 
 nity of a fine animal. 
 
 I withdrew my peering vision from that scene. 
 
 Perhaps it was from modesty, perhaps because 
 something unusual out in the Square had attracted 
 me. There, a whole row of tall houses and elm 
 trees had faded, and I beheld a space across which 
 thousands of forms flashed thronging. They did 
 not fly, were not winged. And then the houses 
 and the trees effaced them. 
 
 When I looked again into the study, the flight 
 of Marion's thoughts had ceased. I fixed my gaze 
 on her body. She was asleep. The physical out- 
 Hnes of the room seemed to dissolve, to return, 
 trembling, distorted, and then to dissolve again. 
 And then, slowly, I saw the chromatic envelope 
 move entirely away from Marion's body. It 
 floated an instant by the side of her, an etherealized 
 Marion. It moved a little toward me, wavered, its 
 colors subtly changing every instant, and finally it 
 swept upward, following the direction of the 
 stream of thoughts. And Marion calmly slept, 
 dreaming. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 A DRAMA 
 
 THE physical world had almost dissolved away. 
 I could see, jutting like some obstinate wreck- 
 age of a catastrophe, the upper corners of my largest 
 bookcase, and here and there a patch of carpet, a 
 fragment of the window, and (after all else had 
 vanished) a red Bernard-Moore vase that seemed to 
 stand self-supported and firm on the shifting colored 
 currents which filled the spaces around me. I was 
 now in the midst of a moving shimmering sea of 
 vapors. Roughly, what I saw might be compared 
 to the tinted smoke that drifts about the ground after 
 a prolonged burning of Bengal lights on a calm 
 night. But the texture of the gaseous fluid, while 
 far finer, was at the same time closer, and the cur- 
 rents were infinitely more complex, though not more 
 rapid. There were no blank interstices. Every- 
 where was motion, vibration, change, close-woven 
 radiance, and enchanting beauty. The currents were 
 marked by different colors and different shades of 
 color : a range of glittering and yet exceedingly soft 
 hues unknown to my physical experience. Yes ; en-' 
 
 1 60 
 
■A DRAMA 
 
 chanting beauty! I was enchanted; I was under a 
 spell of wonder. I gazed exactly as an infant gazes 
 at a bright object. I was, in fact, an infant. I knew 
 that I could not comprehend what I saw, that my 
 observations must necessarily be falsified by a 
 whole series of naive misapprehensions, like the ob- 
 servations of a child, and that only long habit would 
 enable me to see truly that which was before me. 
 And I thought, how wondrous and lovely beyond 
 visions was this spiritual world! 
 
 And then I asked: "Why spiritual?" Why 
 " spiritual " more than " physical? " 
 
 If hydrogen, if ether, is part of the physical 
 world, why must this not be called physical? It 
 was gaseous, but are not gases physical ? It was less 
 substantial than air, but it had substance, and I 
 could throw it into agitation and deflect its ways. 
 And then I saw that, as in the earthly world, so 
 here, and so forever, it was, and eternally would be, 
 impossible even to conceive any phenomenon that 
 was not fundamentally physical. Nothing could be 
 supernatural. This gave me a feeling of comfort- 
 able security. 
 
 Through the transparent prismatic quivering sea 
 floated shapes recalling those which had issued from 
 the form of Marion, more brightly or more deeply 
 colored than the sea, each a dazzling object -tof beauty 
 
 i6i 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 to me — but a beauty sometimes sinister and formi- 
 dable. They moved, by means invisible to my child- 
 ish eyes, with the perfect aptitude of fishes in water 
 — luminous fishes in a lustrous water, radiance in ra- 
 diance; some wandered without apparent purpose, 
 and these were of vague outline; others, quite defi- 
 nite in form, though yieldingly elastic, passed on- 
 ward in straight paths, urgent, as if on a secret and 
 unique errand. Many circled around my head, melt- 
 ing gradually into the sea, but constantly renewed 
 and, therefore, not lessening in number. 
 
 Ecstasy ! 
 
 In my earthly life I had stood in ecstasy before 
 sunsets the beauty of which my imagination could 
 not exceed. . . . Now I smiled at those moments. 
 
 I steeped rnyself in the rapture of this new visual 
 life. 
 
 There was a jarring sound, faint and disconcert- 
 ing, like the sound from another universe. I was 
 aware, with a dim and negligible knowledge, that it 
 was caused by the abrupt blowing to of the window 
 under the impulsion of some earthly breeze. And 
 instantly, with the speed of an emotion, Marion's 
 form swept through the translucent, prismatic sea, 
 and came to rest, the lower limbs stretched forward 
 and the head leaning curiously to one side. The 
 form flashed, scintillating, sheening, incomparably 
 
 162 
 
A DRAMA 
 
 brighter than the bright sea which it had perturbed 
 into new paths of luminous beauty. 
 
 And I thought : 
 
 " The banging of the window has awakened 
 Marion." 
 
 It thrilled me to think that within that form, rec- 
 ondite, uncanny as a wraith is uncanny to the mor- 
 tal sense, was concealed the earthly body of Marion, 
 with its gross flesh, its clothes, the spectacles in the 
 pocket of the apron. And I could not see it. It was 
 hidden from me behind the dazzling veil of more 
 subtle phenomena. I say this thrilled me. 
 
 I thought : 
 
 " Was that her soul, which fled and returned ? " 
 
 I had imagined the soul in my earthly life, so far 
 as I had troubled myself with the impossible task 
 of imagining it, as — as what ? As a flame, or some- 
 thing in the form of a flame; some wisp of divine 
 vapor insecurely imprisoned in my head. But now 
 I saw that the earthly body of Marion, instead of 
 containing an ethereal counterpart, was contained 
 in an ethereal counterpart. I knew, rather than saw, 
 that I, too, was a form resembling the ethereal form 
 of Marion. Was this the soul? Could it be the 
 soul? If so, what divine particle had remained in 
 the earthly body of Marion to keep it in pulsation 
 during the eager soul's clandestine desertion? 
 
 163 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Marion had relinquished her earthly body, and her 
 body slept. I had relinquished my earthly body — 
 and I was dead, as " they " called it. Wherein lay 
 the difference between our cases? 
 
 Child! I was yet an infant, with the inconven- 
 ience of being aware of it. 
 
 The brilliant form of Marion fascinated me, the 
 child! It also was full of vibrations, currents, and 
 shimmerings ; more complex and puzzling than those 
 of the fluid in which it floated at rest. I say " at 
 rest ; " but even its outline was never still, waving 
 elastically from head to foot in scarce perceptible 
 undulations. Every part of it modified itself con- 
 tinuously, carrying on a ceaseless special activity 
 while consenting to the ceaseless change. The 
 whole was a miracle of adaptability. . . . Indescrib- 
 able ! Yes, though in my earthly life I would have 
 been ashamed to write that word! . . . Imagine a 
 watch. Imagine the complexity of a watch multi- 
 plied a thousandfold ! Imagine it undulating in ex- 
 quisite curves while still functioning with absolute 
 exactitude! Imagine it all chromatically luminif- 
 erous ! That is the gross and clumsy best I can do 
 to defeat the indescribability of that form. 
 
 When Marion had served me at dinner, it was 
 that wondrous, waving, lucent form that had bowed 
 toward me. When she would presently offer to my 
 
 164 
 
'A DRAMA 
 
 wife the restoring tea, that dazzling form would 
 miraculously undulate behind the tray, and another, 
 its peer in ineffable beauty, would bend over the 
 earthen cup! . . . Blind! . . . 
 
 A vague shape swam irresolutely downward, 
 from above or behind my head, hung, and dissolved 
 gradually. 
 
 Then recommenced the emanation of clearly 
 defined floating shapes from the head of the ethereal 
 counterpart of Marion. They detached themselves, 
 one after another, in the manner of bubbles, and 
 flowed away in a procession, as different as indi- 
 viduals and as similar as Chinamen. I brought to- 
 gether all my childish faculties to study their birth. 
 Their inception was indubitably to be seen in a whorl 
 or volution of the omnipresent fluid, drawn into the 
 form of Marion, matured there, and then expelled. 
 The movements and modifications were so rapid 
 and so confusing that I could determine no more 
 than this. But as each shape floated off from the 
 creative form, I perceived that the operations of the 
 force which had molded it had also had their effect 
 on the creative form itself, and that the general re- 
 sult was structural cellular change. And while I 
 marveled I knew that I should rightly have mar- 
 veled more had it been otherwise. 
 
 And this was my first dim view of the physical 
 i6s 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 aspect of thought. Only a httle while, and I had 
 by an old instinct sought to confine the attribute 
 " physical " to the earthly world. I had had to force 
 myself to apply it to this other world.. But now I 
 understood that this other world was far more inti- 
 mately and visibly physical than the earthly. In the 
 earthly, one timorously postulated the physical basis 
 of thought ; in- this other it was patent. And I saw 
 that words were a device invented by the earthly 
 world to lessen the inconveniences caused by its in- 
 sensibility to all but the grossest physical phenom- 
 ena. The earthly world was responsive to nothing 
 finer than air; hence it employed the vibrations of 
 air to remedy the tremendous defects of its eyesight. 
 Now I noticed that two plainly distinct species of 
 thought shapes were being thrown off from Marion's 
 form. One was violet colored, the other a delicate 
 rose. Sometimes there would be a long succession 
 of the violet, then of the rose ; then they would alter- 
 nate evenly. And then, as I watched, I could trace 
 a third stream of almost crude vermilion shapes 
 darting forth in a direction different from that of 
 the other two. The vermilion shapes alarmed me, 
 and even the beauty of the violet shapes, as I studied 
 them, inspired me with a certain antipathy. And, 
 time passing and my vision improving, I could dis- 
 cern that the effects, on the woman's ethereal organ- 
 
 i66 
 
A DRAMA 
 
 ism, of these three different series of acts of thought, 
 were markedly dissimilar. Their dissimilarity soon 
 so impressed me that I wondered I had observed any- 
 thing else. 
 
 I followed the irregular streams of vermilion 
 shapes. By an effort of concentration I could fol- 
 low their absorbed and as it were angry flight 
 through the endless living luminance. And I found 
 that their objective was the form of another woman, 
 brighter even than Marion's. The form was in an 
 upright attitude, nearly still. Its earthly counterpart 
 was not, therefore, asleep. I sought intensely to 
 distinguish the earthly counterpart and could not. 
 Then I saw a number of less dazzling forms, hori- 
 zontally disposed, in rows ; and I reflected upon hos- 
 pitals, barracks, hotels. But the horizontal forms 
 were all forms of women. What could be the earthly 
 solution ? 
 
 The vermilion shapes that had so resolutely and 
 inexorably voyaged under Marion's impulse to the 
 vigil-keeping woman assaulted with extraordinary 
 obstinacy the radiant form of the latter. It was as 
 though they had been endowed with an energy, a 
 hatred of their own; it was as if they lived with a 
 vitality of their own. And their legion increased; 
 sometimes they completely enveloped the radiant 
 form as in a vast menace. 
 
 167 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 And then: — another discovery in the exquisite 
 drama — I traced an emanation of thought shapes 
 from the dazzling, whirling brain that the vermilions 
 were attacking. I had overlooked them at first, with 
 my infantile careless organs, owing to the extreme, 
 pure delicacy of their rosy tints. But having secured 
 my attention, they held it by the esoteric quality of 
 their shy beauty. I followed them, in their turn, 
 leaving the radiant form enmeshed in inimical ver- 
 milions. Their goal was the male form which I had 
 previously learned to be the goal of Marion's 
 thoughts before she slept, and which I surely 
 guessed the ethereal part of her had visited during 
 her dream. I could no longer see the trestle bed, 
 nor any trace of the earthly man. I settled for my- 
 self his identity chiefly by recognizing the unmis- 
 takable stream of violet and rosy shapes which 
 Marion was still directing upon him. 
 
 To me, the naive child, it was a stupendous spec- 
 tacle, a spectacle overwhelming in awe and beauty — ' 
 this soft besieging, this importunity or invocation 
 of the unconscious male form by the double and the 
 single streams of thoughts impelled by the two 
 women distant from him and from each other ! The 
 powerful latent elegance of the transparent and glit- 
 tering form, reposing inactive yet the theater of in- 
 numerable vital currents and vibrations that showed 
 
 i68 
 
A DRAMA 
 
 themselves in shifting brightness; and round about 
 it the dazzling play and interplay of the small, ap- 
 pealing, lucent shapes, each influential with its spe- 
 cial energy! The simplicity of the child in me at 
 once grasped the significance of the different col- 
 orations. The violet were the vehicles of desire, 
 and the rose were the messengers of unselfish affec- 
 tion. No two shapes were alike in tint or in outline. 
 There were endless shades of rose; the tenderer 
 came from the unknown woman, whose emissaries 
 never wore the formidable violet hue. The vermil- 
 ions passing from Marion to the unknown woman 
 were the shapes of jealous hatred. 
 
 I remembered, suddenly, having heard that the 
 fair young man who was employed about the exterior 
 of Palace Court Mansions had previously served in 
 some outdoor capacity at a prison for women con- 
 victs. I was assisting at the struggle between a 
 parlor maid and a female warder for the heart of an 
 odd-job man. Only I was a witness of that aspect 
 of it which was too radiant for the earthly eye to see ; 
 the fine physical basis of it all, beyond the planes of 
 earthly vision. 
 
 And I thought : 
 
 " If the hidden activity of such souls is so entranc- 
 ingly resplendent, what must be the hidden activity 
 of more advanced beings ? " And again : " Perhaps, 
 
 169 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 nay, certainly, I have not seen all, even of these 
 three. Beyond what I have seen there may be — 
 there are — phenomena still more amazing in beauty." 
 
 In the hasty insolence of a suddenly acquired 
 knowledge I had but a few moments ago called the 
 earthly race a race of porters and navvies. Now I 
 knew that a complete physical vision of even a porter 
 or a navvy would dazzle my sight and my intellect, 
 newly enlarged, of which I had been so proud. I 
 humbled myself joyously in wonder. The solemn 
 thing was that " they " themselves lived in ignorance 
 of their own splendor, and of the fineness of their 
 organism, and of the reach of their faculties. Their 
 magnificence was veiled from them. They existed in 
 easy mastery amidst miracles, doing miracles — and 
 never suspected. They did not suspect the hun- 
 dredth part of the powers which they possessed and 
 constantly exercised. They were but awaking from 
 unconsciousness into consciousness. They worked 
 in the thick gloom of instinct, not knowing when 
 they did good for themselves and when evil. They 
 were building the future with terrific tools, and 
 guessed not. 
 
 As, my searching eyes returning to their original 
 objective, I watched the prismatic form of Marion, 
 with the head on one side, creating and dispatching 
 thought shapes amidst that sea of fluid light, I could 
 
 170 
 
A DRAMA 
 
 not help marveling at the chasm between the self of 
 which she was conscious and the self of which she 
 was unconscious. Since I could not see the earthly 
 view of Marion, my fancy pictured it. She reclined 
 in the easy-chair, her tousled head against one of 
 the ear flaps, and those grotesque spectacles in one 
 of the pockets of her apron. Commanded to relate 
 sincerely what experiences she had passed through, 
 she would have replied that she had gone into the 
 study of her late master to rest, had thought con- 
 siderably about a man whom she loved, had fallen 
 asleep and dreamed of him, had been awakened by 
 a noise, and had continued to think about her lover, 
 with a certain preoccupation concerning another 
 woman whom she knew to be interested in him. And 
 she would have supposed herself to be precisely the 
 same Marion as had sat down in the chair. That 
 was all. She could not have even the dimmest sur- 
 mise that she possessed a body compact of light, that 
 she had fabricated volitional shapes and sent them, 
 charged with her vital energy, infallibly to fixed des- 
 tinations, that she had physically and eternally in- 
 fluenced other beings at a distance, that the radiant 
 physical part of her had visited her lover where he 
 lay, and finally that she was ceaselessly modifying 
 her own organism and so deciding the tendencies of 
 her future. 
 
 12 171 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I gazed at the lambent brilliance of the form, 
 coruscating those chromatic shapes. And I was 
 aware of pity for her. I wanted somehow to warn 
 her of the grave and lasting import of her apparently 
 trifling activities. I wanted to protect her from the 
 tremendous perils of her own ignorance of herself. 
 And instantly I saw, wending from my form to hers, 
 a series of pale rose shapes, as lovely in their clear 
 and intricate outlines as in the delicacy of their tints. 
 Previously, I had emanated none but gray or bluish 
 shapes, inchoate or vague, and without defined direc- 
 tion. These new shapes followed one another pur- 
 posefully in a waving stream and surrounded gently 
 the ethereal form of Marion, touching it in soft con- 
 tacts and pressures, and being, perhaps, infinitesi- 
 mally absorbed into it. I stood afraid of my own 
 powers. Soon afterwards, other shapes, and harsher, 
 visited her, and then her bright form moved gliding 
 away. 
 
 Had I sufficiently willed I might have followed it. 
 But I did not. 
 
 I was intoxicated by knowledge, and the thirst 
 for knowledge seized me with such violence that I 
 seemed tq sink into a kind of inanition. " More 
 knowledge! A deeper penetration of the mystery! 
 In that alone lies happiness ! " Such were my ex- 
 piring thoughts. 
 
 172 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE COST OF GRIEF 
 
 I GREW conscious of external vibrations which 
 were setting up vibrations with myself. I 
 struggled instinctively against this disturbance, as 
 one in heavy sleep instinctively seeks to repel the 
 influence which would wake him. But I did not 
 succeed. My perceptive faculties became unwill- 
 ingly but acutely active. I was still in the bright 
 living atmosphere of innumerable currents and 
 ever-changing hues. And my form was surrounded 
 by thought shapes transparent and prismatic. I 
 saw now that immense multitudes of these shapes 
 surged everywhere in the atmosphere, but that 
 most of them were so tenuous and slight as to be 
 scarcely visible. To distinguish them from the 
 medium in which they moved needed practice. Of 
 the shapes specially surrounding myself none save 
 two species produced any efifect on me whatever. 
 But those two species did assuredly affect me, 
 causing modifications of my substance. And then 
 I understood, wondering why I had not understood 
 
 173 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 before, that they, like all the rest, were in rapid 
 vibration and that their power over myself de- 
 pended on the correspondence of their vibrations 
 with certain of my own. And I saw how crude and 
 infantile was my original idea that the thought 
 shapes acted on the bright forms of individuals by 
 being absorbed into them. 
 
 These two streams of thought were, as I felt in- 
 stantly, the messengers of Inez and perhaps Mar- 
 ion, seeking to draw me again to the earthly plane. 
 They wanted me ; they longed for me ; they grieved 
 piteously at my departure, and would have it can- 
 celed, undone; they wished time itself to roll back. 
 Perhaps they were together now, those two, weep- 
 ing quietly — Marion weeping respectfully. Little 
 they guessed that they were enveloped in light and 
 that their thoughts, urged by the intensity of their 
 desires, were shooting forth in coruscating torrents 
 to lure me whence I had come. The shapes, con- 
 tinuously arriving, were surpassingly beautiful to 
 the sight ; one stream was outrageously beautiful — 
 there is no other phrase for it. But with that 
 hysteric violence I sought to shake them off, to 
 nullify by mere volition the strange force of their 
 influence over me! 
 
 I saw with painful alarm an impending tragedy, 
 myself the victim and those two women the igno- 
 
 174 
 
THE COST OF GRIEF 
 
 rant cause of it. They could only attract me neaf 
 themselves, to leave me beating once more in vain 
 against the shut gates of humanity. They could 
 never see me. I could never join them. Their 
 grief — and especially the savage, remorseful grief 
 of Inez — meant nothing but disaster for me, tor- 
 ture, futility, a desolating break in my evolution ! 
 
 Was it possible that Inez did not guess? Was it 
 possible that she was blind to the callous, indiffer- 
 ent selfishness of her grief — that grief in which she 
 certainly took pride? 
 
 Yes, it was possible; it was sure. The crime 
 against me was due to naught but lack of reflec- 
 tion. If Inez had reflected an instant she must have 
 seen that to wish me back was to wish me evil, 
 pain, danger, and retrogression. But she consid- 
 ered only the smart of her own sorrow; at any cost 
 she would heal that! I, too, in my time, had been 
 as she was. 
 
 I longed passionately to go forward. Knowledge, 
 more and stranger knowledge, was calling me on. 
 I was awake again to the divine thirst. But these 
 untowardly beautiful visitants, with their soft 
 urgency, drew me to retreat. 
 
 Already in patches, and momentarily, the earth- 
 ly world broke through the lucent plane, coarsely 
 islanding the sea of radiance with fragments of 
 
 175 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the existence which I had left. Sometimes I could 
 see a whole room, a whole street, clouds, a steeple 
 — apparent and then gone. All was unfamiliar, un- 
 recognizable. Probably I should have discovered 
 myself in my own home, had I not struggled fiercely 
 against any such destination. I was like a ship 
 that, determined not to fly before the wind, slides 
 across it at an angle, subject to it but defying it. I 
 saw multitudes of radiant forms sweeping along 
 together in the sea of light, and then solitary ones, 
 and then more, traveling in an opposite direction. 
 I saw groups of radiant animals, I saw mysterious 
 radiant creatures resembling nothing in my ex- 
 perience, engaged intensely in activities as mys- 
 terious as themselves. All these waving in the farr 
 stretching, vibrant translucency cloven by sudden 
 irruptions of gross earthly phenomena. I was 
 dazed. 
 
 Then the translucency grew more somber; of a 
 darker glow and flush. And I saw hundreds of 
 male forms on the same plane as myself, but less 
 lustrous than any I had yet encountered, cro\yding 
 toward one spot. And as the atmosphere in which 
 they waved became more lurid, I distinguished the 
 roofs and towers of a pubHc square intruding in it, 
 and particularly a building that glared with col- 
 ored earthly lights. The waving forms of my fel- 
 
 176 
 
THE COST OF GRIEF 
 
 lows besieged this building; some floated hesitant 
 at the doors, others swept ethereally through its 
 coarse earthly walls into the interior. It was a 
 fashionable music hall, the Ottoman, to which John 
 Hulse had several times taken me. I could see 
 simultaneously the exterior and the interior, with 
 its horseshoe shape and its three garish prome- 
 nades one above another, and the stage like a box 
 with one side removed. It was crammed with 
 earthly beings of both sexes, either intent upon the 
 transactions of the stage or eying each other as 
 they walked to and fro in the promenades. A 
 strange, ridiculous spectacle! And all bathed, in- 
 terpenetrated by the darkly luminiferous sea in 
 which waved I and my fellows! Mournful confu- 
 sion of two planes! A grievous band, my fellows — 
 sinister, anxious, unhappy, agog, lickerish. See 
 the timid regiment that dared not or could not 
 enter! See their set eyes! And see those within, 
 waving and wending, dully chromatic, among the 
 promenading women whose gaudy clothes were 
 obscured by the luminosity which emanated from 
 each of them. Unconscious music hall! Conflict 
 and altercation of lights, planes, and existences! 
 Could they have surmised, those earthly ones, could 
 they have truly glimpsed their visitants or even 
 themselves — what a scene of terror! . . . The 
 
 177 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 earthly lights began to fade, the earthly beings 
 poured out, stampeding into the open square, and 
 so separated into groups and units. And my fel- 
 lows turned disappointed and unsatisfied away. 
 But some could not leave the building; they waved 
 within it or without it, held perhaps by forces 
 which they themselves had unwittingly created. 
 
 I slanted onward, cheerless and chagrined, but 
 feeling less and less the magnetic influence of those 
 beautiful thought shapes which were, however, still 
 following me from Inez. And after other similar 
 and possibly stranger spectacles than that of the 
 square, I seemed to quit entirely the range of 
 earthliness, and I was once more in the radiant and 
 thrilled atmosphere of moving color unstained by 
 any gross invasion. My mood lightened as I voy- 
 aged. And at length I perceived that this ocean 
 was a solitude for me. I alone deflected its mul- 
 titudinous currents. No thought shapes even wan- 
 dered through it, save a few that still obstinately 
 but faintly pursued myself. 
 
 And then I descried a brighter luminance. And 
 I approached it, nearer and nearer; until, compared 
 to its splendor, the splendor of the ambient atmos- 
 phere was darkness. And amidst the glittering 
 rays which darted around the luminance, my daz- 
 zled eyes seemed to distinguish a form of pure 
 
 178 
 
THE COST OF GRIEF 
 
 light. I trembled. Dread was upon me. I wanted 
 to draw still nearer. But I dared not. My pride 
 refused me. I feared, not for my safety, but lest I 
 might encounter a greater than I. Cowardice! 
 Always I had declined to bow to the conception of 
 a spiritual superior. I turned and fled. Yes, it 
 was a flight. Not a single thought shape now 
 dogged me. I was solitary. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 CONCEIVE the luminous air, less agitated 
 here by currents, but still flashing and 
 sparkling in delicate hues, strange even to my now 
 accustomed eyes. I have called it a sea, in my for- 
 lorn attempts after the impossible adequacy of de- 
 scription. Dismiss any idea of humidity, of resist- 
 ance, of embarrassment, of unusualness. I existed 
 in an element that was my element, as proper and 
 as necessary to me as earthly air once. That I 
 should live in diffused light, in a visible atmosphere, 
 in an environment of transparencies, seemed abso- 
 lutely natural to me. I say this lest I should have 
 inadvertently led you to conceive me as miracu- 
 lously swimming through miraculous wet waves, or 
 moving half blinded amidst the colored fumes of 
 unimagined fires. I was at home. 
 
 Save myself and this encircling air, the sole 
 phenomena were the vague thought shapes which 
 constantly emanated from me, floating idle near for 
 a time and then vanishing. 
 
 I was alone. Before my death, my greatest 
 pleasure had been in reflection. The habit of re- 
 
 i8o 
 
FREEDOM 
 
 flection was assuredly dearer to me than no matter 
 what companionship; and I would not have sacri- 
 ficed it to gain any reputation whatever. Yet if it 
 had been remarked to me, before my death : " You 
 are happiest when you withdraw within yourself," 
 I should have sincerely denied the assertion. I 
 now perceived how true it would have been. With 
 what a feehng of almost ecstatic joy and freedom 
 I used to plunge into the streets in order to muse 
 at my ease! With what deep satisfaction I savored 
 my contemplations, even when they were gloomy, 
 as ordinarily they were. A futile self-indulgence! 
 
 In this Hfe and light bestowing atmosphere, with 
 a mental apparatus incomparably less defective 
 than that other, I mused for an eternity, amidst 
 conditions of unexampled freedom, except the lib- 
 erty to encounter other phenomena. And I said to 
 myself: 
 
 " Should this be likened to heaven or to hell? " 
 
 And I replied: 
 
 " To both." It was neither distinctly a reward 
 nor distinctly a punishment (for a punishment is 
 also a reward), but a consequence, a sequel. 
 
 I had no sense of time nor of change. There 
 was no morning, no night. Nor did I desire these 
 external accidents. I was set and fixed in a calm, 
 omnipresent, vacuous beauty, inviolate. 
 
 i8i 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE WOMAN 
 
 A DESIRE awakened in me for companion- 
 ship. It waxed, became definite and precise. 
 For a space I had the sensation of being no longer 
 alone, but my eyes could not confirm the sensa- 
 tion. Then, near me, without surprise, but with 
 rapture, I saw a woman. She was more radiant 
 than any radiant creature I had yet seen, save the 
 one from whose hght I had retreated, and whom 
 indeed I could not be said to have veritably seen. 
 She was the acme of the beautiful in my experi- 
 ence; in face, in figure, and in grace. She saw me 
 without surprise, but with rapture. 
 I shared eternity with this woman. 
 We passed through an existence on a level of 
 noble simplicity not to be conceived on the earthly 
 plane — noble in its passion, in its repose, in all its 
 intercourse, mental and emotional. We were never, 
 as the phrase is, " brought to earth " by the petti- 
 ness of life. The conditions of our life eliminated 
 any pettiness. Even our bodies did not weigh 
 
 182 
 
THE WOMAN 
 
 upon us, obstinate in their grossness. Our rela- 
 tions were purified by the complete absence of ap- 
 prehension, serious or trifling. We did not fear the 
 morrow, nor the fragility of the physical frame, nor 
 penury, nor death, nor the soul's capriciousness, 
 nor the wound of an ugly vision, nor the incursion 
 of another's grief into our bliss. Our life together 
 was the essence of life, classically purged of the ex- 
 trinsic; it was raised to the elemental. 
 
 We had not even names. 
 
 She combined in her nature all fine qualities, 
 even the most opposite. She was the very spirit of 
 grace; never did she lapse from grace. All the 
 physical manifestations of her were lovely. She 
 was more feminine than any being of her sex that 
 I had ever seen. She was yielding; she was 
 acquiescent; she was the embodiment of surrender. 
 Yet when she had given all, she had more to give, 
 and after every sort of compliance her own power- 
 ful individuality remained intact. She reflected, 
 but was not a glass. Her receptivity exalted me, 
 but did not lower herself. She was always ready 
 to mold her mood to mine; but when I wished to 
 mold mine to hers, she had sufficient force to make 
 the freak a valuable experience. She had the per- 
 fect modesty of utter shamelessness. She recon- 
 ciled dignity with capriciousness, and capricious- 
 
 183 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ness with reason. She was both intuitive and 
 rational. She never argued like a woman except in 
 circumstances when the result would be creditable 
 to each of us. She never sheltered herself, against 
 me, behind her womanhood. She had, to a degree 
 that did not cease to be astounding, the skill to pre- 
 serve my self-respect and her own and my respect 
 for her: feat of supreme difificulty; feat also neces- 
 sary to a perfect relationship! She soothed with- 
 out enervating. She stimulated without fatiguing. 
 She was constant without monotony. She was 
 faultless without being tedious. 
 
 And she had a glance. . . . 
 
 Before my death I had impatiently demanded, in 
 the excess of my fastidiousness, why all women 
 could not be rolled into one woman for the com- 
 panionship of a man. I had envisaged such an all- 
 comprehensive woman as an impossible ideal. 
 Here it was realized. Here it was much more than 
 realized, for she had every fine quality in greater 
 profusion than I had met any single fine quality in 
 any woman before. As an instrument of every no- 
 ble pleasure, she exceeded the dream as the dream 
 exceeded the previous reality. She was mine. She 
 was my complement; but I was under no obliga- 
 tion to be hers. Her destiny was to complete 
 mine. She was happy in it. She asked no more. 
 
 184 
 
THE WOMAN 
 
 With all her glorious faculties and charms, she was 
 joyously content to subserve my end. It was the 
 most sublime flattery that could be conceived. 
 
 " Is it heaven or hell? " I asked myself, in the 
 midst of eternity. 
 
 And after an eternal pause, I replied: 
 
 " Both." 
 
 I thus lived between meditation and the woman, 
 wrapped in beauty. 
 
 Whether she knew that I was in heaven and in 
 hell I could not guess. Though her very soul 
 seemed to have the transparency of crystal, I could 
 not guess. This was the unique, insoluble enigma 
 that the wondrous creature offered to my intelli- 
 gence. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE PALACE 
 
 IT was she who descried the palace. I call it a 
 palace, not because it was immense and gorgeous, 
 but because of its impressive dignity and stateliness. 
 It rose, secure upon no foundations, aloft in the 
 luminifercus ether, glittering prismatically as every- 
 thing glittered, somewhat brighter than the pulsating 
 air, rather less bright than ourselves. It so nearly 
 matched the air in hues and radiance, that at first I 
 could scarcely distinguish the form of its architec- 
 ture ; it was like an edifice of pearl seen faintly in a 
 sun-steeped mist. It seemed unreal. But it was 
 real enough. Presently, I could decipher its dome, 
 its slender pillars masking its walls, its cornices, and 
 its inviting portal. It had no windows. 
 
 On the radiant plane it was the only object I had 
 met whose outlines did not continuously wave. It 
 existed rigid as a whole, but within the undefiected 
 outlines, a slight vibration of the material itself could 
 be observed. 
 
 i86 
 
THE PALACE 
 
 I entered alone. And when I beheld its interior 
 I exclaimed softly to myself 
 
 " Of course ! " 
 
 It was a library. I was a bookman ; I had always 
 been a bookman. From adolescence books had been 
 one of my passions. Books not merely — and per- 
 haps not chiefly — as vehicles of learning or knowl- 
 edge, but books as books, books as entities, books as 
 beautiful things, books as historical antiquities, books 
 as repositories of memorable associations. Ques- 
 tions of type, ink, paper, margins, watermarks, pagi- 
 nations, bindings, were capable of really agitating 
 me. I was too sensitive and catholic a lover of books 
 to be a scholar in the strict modern meaning of the 
 term. My magnum opus was, not a work of scholar- 
 ship, and even such scholarship as it comprised had 
 been attained by a labor hateful to me. I would in- 
 hale the scholarship of others as a sweet smell. I 
 would gather it like honey, but eclectically, never ex- 
 hausting one flower before trying the next. My 
 knowledge was, perhaps, considerable, but it was un- 
 organized. And my principal claim to consideration 
 was that I could wander in any demesne of culture 
 without having the awkward air of a stranger. In 
 brief, I was comprehensively bookish. 
 
 I had dreamed of libraries, as every bookman has 
 dreamed of libraries. This one did not correspond 
 13 187 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 with my dream, because it went beyond my dream in 
 every particular. I could see that at a glance, by 
 the look of the volumes, by the disposition of the 
 volumes, and by the machinery of research. No 
 book in any noble library is so interesting, so reveal- 
 ing, as the catalogue of it. Every bookman has dis- 
 covered this truth for himself. The catalogue of 
 this library was ranged on a series of low shelves 
 under the dome. The catalogue of this library was 
 more finely printed, and more superbly bound than 
 any book that I had ever seen. Each quarto volume 
 was an individual triumph of typography. " The 
 setting of the page — desperate problem in catalogue 
 or dictionary — was a masterpiece of technical in- 
 genuity. Not till my nostrils had quivered to these 
 delights, did I turn to the plan of the catalogue, with 
 its system of two simultaneous alphabets, so intri- 
 cate and yet so effectively simple. The catalogue in 
 an instant of time told me more of the library than I 
 could easily believe. 
 
 Lying open on the desk above the rows of the 
 catalogue was a folio, open : Henry Stephen's edition 
 of Herodotus, familiar to amateurs of impartial taste 
 as one of the most beautiful books existing in the 
 Greek character. But not such an example of the 
 treasure as I had seen ! An example transmuted into 
 the very divinity of bibliophily! Radiant, light- 
 
 i88 
 
THE PALACE 
 
 giving, immaculate ! To touch it was to thrill. And 
 every book, in its degree, was thus consummated into 
 the transcendent. 
 
 I began to use the library. I said to myself: 
 " This alone lacked." And I knew how to use it. 
 I was worthy of it. It was an instrument which I 
 could employ without degrading it. My assimilative 
 powers astonished me, though I knew that they were 
 tremendously enriched. The rapidity with which I 
 could seize the principles of an unknown language 
 was specially exciting. 
 
 In the library I spent an eternity, making contacts 
 with all cultures, and acquiring an erudition that by 
 the standard of an earthly plane would be deemed 
 immeasurable. But I never exhausted the library. 
 I never even approached its confines. I never saw 
 the beginning of the end of it. And I was free. I 
 read where I pleased ; I went deep where I pleased ; 
 I was superficial where I pleased. I had no task, no 
 obligation, no finite goal. My one aim was to pro- 
 cure pleasure in absorbing that which was delicate, 
 refined, humane, curious, distinguished, in the emo- 
 tional and learned literature of the centuries. I was 
 the supreme dilettante. I had always longed to carry 
 the cult of belles-lettres to unprecedented heights. 
 Now I accomplished what I had wished to accom- 
 plish, and tenfold what I had wished to accomplish, 
 
 189 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 amidst conditions that fulfilled the ideal. For not 
 merely was this ardor of self-perfection unattended 
 by any personal inconveniences, but it involved the 
 neglect of no duty. 
 
 The woman was happy in my absorption, and she 
 was happy when I drew out of it and lost myself in 
 her. Part of her destiny was to be solitary wheni had 
 no need of her, and the weaving of one part of her 
 destiny was no more precious to her than the weav- 
 ing of another. It was inconceivable that her glance 
 should reproach me, or that I could be guilty 
 toward her. Such was our relation that my every 
 act, because it was my act, was best for her. 
 
 And still I asked myself: 
 
 " Is it heaven or hell? " 
 
 And I replied: 
 
 " It is both." 
 
 I began, in the midst of delicious and calm eter- 
 nities of perfect realization to be ever so dimly aware 
 within me of disturbing intuitions. They shot 
 through me, were gone, and were forgotten. They 
 returned, and I remembered the forgotten flash of 
 them. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV, 
 
 CULMINATION 
 
 I THUS lived with my thoughts and with the 
 woman, in and out of the palace of literatures, 
 that rested firm and lovely forever on no foundation 
 amidst the luminiferous air. I was continually dis- 
 covering new pleasures within the palace, and yet 
 nothing that I discovered could surprise me ; not even 
 the pictures and sculptures which abounded in 
 quiet aisles of it, and whose tremendous power and 
 beauty were even less susceptible of adequate de- 
 scription than the library itself. I could not exist in 
 the palace without being the constant and thrilled ob- 
 ject of the most lofty and delicate influences of art. 
 Then I found a new doorway at the extremity 
 of the palace, and, looking from it, I saw, in the 
 universal radiance, distant landscapes and seas. 
 Never, since my death, till then, had I seen a land- 
 scape. These were the majestic, absolute perfecting 
 of earthly landscapes — purified of the accidental. I 
 can only liken them, clumsily, to the landscapes of 
 the greatest Japanese paintings, vast, simple, over- 
 
 191 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 whelming in the severe sobriety of their beauty. 
 Mountains ; valleys ; rivers that wound in expressive 
 and faultless curves to solemn oceans; and the line 
 of coasts! All more radiant than the radiant air! 
 All transparently gleaming in a consonance of hues 
 without a name ! All bathed in the speechless calm 
 of eternity ! 
 
 What an ennobling and fresh impulse to the 
 thoughts ! 
 
 And, nearer, were immense gardens, strictly for- 
 malized : avenues, alleys, borders, fountains, trained 
 trees, geometric spaces, canals, patterns of 
 flowers, statuary, belvideres. And the chief avenue 
 ran, widening out of the long perspective, right up 
 to the doorway at which I stood. It was all mine. 
 And with the woman I would wander in it, enfran- 
 chised from every care and preoccupation. Ideal 
 nature in the distance; nature subjugated by ideal 
 art around us, and fine art itself in the palace ! No 
 time; no task! Freedom and eternity! 
 
 Then I came to the first of the pavilions of music, 
 in which orchestras and smaller groups played the 
 most sublime and the most accomplished of all the 
 music that was known to me, and many composi- 
 tions which were unfamiliar and which left me the 
 ecstatic and silent victim of their power. In all this 
 music the exquisite quality of the tone itself was what 
 
 192 
 
CULMINATION 
 
 first amazed me; the basic material out of which 
 beauty was fashioned was itself surpassingly beauti- 
 ful. I had not heard such instruments, nor such 
 technique. Nor can I describe this music. And yet, 
 I could have described it then. It was in connection 
 with this music that I first" had intercourse with be- 
 ings other than the woman on my own plane. The 
 musicians themselves were hedged away from me 
 by the peculiar construction of the pavilions. But 
 there were other listening wanderers in the gardens. 
 And they were ready to converse. We conversed 
 with familiar ease, unastonished at the encounter, 
 unharassed by any curiosity concerning each other, 
 demanding and expecting nothing from each other 
 but subtlety, justness, and clarity in our critical and 
 comparative appreciations of that which we heard. 
 I was indeed among equals ; safe from the horrid jar 
 of ignorance, violence, or prejudice. These ex- 
 changes of opinion, these confessions of emotional 
 experience, filled in the most delicious manner the 
 pauses of the music. As soon as the mood dictated 
 I departed from the garden, quitting the other dilet- 
 tanti without any regret, but with the pleasurable 
 anticipation of meeting them again. From the door- 
 way I would watch for a moment the beautiful atti- 
 tudes assumed by their iridescent forms under the 
 waving trees. I had no wish for closer intimacy 
 
 193 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 with them. That earthly longing to tear the veil 
 from the secrets of personality seemed somewhat 
 infantile to me, if not vulgar. The profound inti- 
 macy of my one companion sufficed. I savored the 
 society of the inhabitants of the garden ; I had fer- 
 vent joy in my one companion; but my delight in 
 loneliness never lessened. 
 
 In my loneliness I would reflect upon the strange 
 sequence of my history. I saw that the supreme 
 experience of the music had been reserved for me. 
 I understood the logical order of the phases. I 
 marveled that until each experience came I should 
 not have felt the lack of it. I, whose concern had 
 been supereminently with music, had not consciously 
 desired music tilM heard its sound. Desire and the 
 satisfaction of desire had been simultaneous. 
 
 Enveloped in eternity I lived amidst universal na- 
 ture, and amidst music, and amidst the influences of 
 the other arts, tasting erudition, smoothly consort- 
 ing with equal individualities, losing myself awhile 
 in radiant space with my one perfect companion, 
 and at moments withdrawing into absolute solitude 
 that I might know what I was. The existence was 
 like a dream ; but it was not a dream. It had the 
 magic and incredible idealism of a dream; but it 
 was not a dream. It was a physical reality — visible, 
 audible, tangible. It lacked naught. Not even was 
 
 194 
 
CULMINATION 
 
 it flawed by dark tints of regret for those familiari- 
 ties and those faces which I had left behind on the 
 other side of death. No ! The tie with that other 
 plane seemed to be definitely snapped. I had no 
 sorrow. 
 
 And still, I asked myself : 
 
 " Is this heaven or hell ? " 
 
 And the answer was the same as it had always 
 been. 
 
 And those disturbing intuitions revisited me with 
 their lancinating flash, frequently and more fre- 
 quently: forgotten, and insistently recalling them- 
 selves to my memory, made forgetful by the perfec- 
 tion of conceivable happiness. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE DEATH OF DESIRE 
 
 AT a certain moment, after an unusually long 
 ,. period of solil^ary reflection, I became aware 
 of the possession of a definite and paramount idea. 
 And I saw its shape, dififering utterly from any 
 other shape. I saw it and felt it suddenly, but the 
 time of its gestation within me must have been im- 
 mense. It was the fruit of all those persistent and 
 similar strokes of intuition. Revolutionary, fatal, 
 and final in character, it nevertheless neither star- 
 tled nor intimidated me. I beheld it calmly, as 
 though I had been acquainted with it from everlast- 
 ing. It was: that I had been, and was still, living 
 in hell. (I perhaps need not say that I use the 
 word " hell " for its large associational convenience, 
 trusting that it may be aptly interpreted.) My lot 
 did not partake of the nature of heaven. 
 
 Every fine and beautiful desire which had con- 
 stantly and genuinely actuated me in that other 
 and ended existence, had in this existence been 
 realized to a degree transcendental and previously 
 
 196 
 
THE DEATH OF DESIRE 
 
 unimaginable. Every such desire had even been 
 purged of what was mean and accidental in it, and 
 had passed into consummation in the purest essen- 
 tial form, free from all trace of trivial or base ad- 
 mixtures. My plan for the extension and comple- 
 tion of my egoism had been impeccably executed, 
 either by me or for me. 
 
 Eternity lapsed onward in the midst of universal 
 radiance — and I was in hell. The foundation of 
 my consciousness was an affliction so intense that 
 during an eternity I had generally accepted it for 
 a bliss equally intense. (And indeed it is within 
 the experience of everyone that when pleasure and 
 pain reach a certain intensity they are indistin- 
 guishable). But now I had reached the stage of 
 clear vision. Strange that one can inhabit hell 
 without the sure conviction of being there! 
 
 And another epochal idea was born in me, 
 equally definite, less fundamental, but distressing. 
 I myself had created those instruments to the reaH- 
 zation of desire. The woman, the palace, the litera- 
 tures, the works of art, the garden, the music, the 
 musicians, the elegant dilettanti, the formidable and 
 lovely landscapes— I had created them all. In- 
 comparably marvelous as they were, they were yet 
 the toys which the spiritual child in me had created 
 for his diversion out of the all-permeating ethereal 
 
 197 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 essence in which I existed. Or, if I was not the 
 creator, I was the cause of the creative acts. The 
 creative acts had been performed at my will. The 
 order of the universe was such that terrific energies 
 of creation were in subjection to my impulses. I had 
 dreamed — yes, I will admit now what previously I 
 had denied — I had dreamed; but here one could 
 not dream without creating realities. The elastic 
 responsiveness of matter was so sensitive that 
 vision and physical fact were one. 
 
 Even the woman I had created. She was su- 
 pernal, but she was only the blossom of my de- 
 sire; she was only an inefifable extension of my 
 egoism. 
 
 I say that this knowledge distressed me. It was 
 humiliating, more humiliating than any other ex- 
 perience in my memory. And the whole of my 
 sublime creation gradually descended in my es- 
 teem till it appeared — no, not tawdry, though I 
 was about to use the word — ^but negligible ! Exqui- 
 sitely and painfully negligible! An infant's play- 
 thing! 
 
 And yet it constituted a fabulously prodigious 
 array, there behind me on the borders of my soli- 
 tude. As I passed it mentally in review, I thrilled in 
 retrospect, as one thrills after a wonder or a danger 
 which one appreciates only when it is over. The 
 
 iq8 
 
THE DEATH OF DESIRE 
 
 sense of the creative power of thought wrapped me 
 in disconcerting folds of the uncanny. That wom- 
 an! .. . What would thought not do, impelled by 
 desire? How did I stand, the creator, toward her, 
 the created? Could I dissolve her back into the 
 essence, resuming the energy which I had breathed 
 into her? Had I the right to do so? This that I 
 had committed was the most mysterious and aw- 
 ful of sins. I dared not emerge from my solitude, 
 and, returning to the loveliness which my desire 
 had brought into existence, look it in the face! No 
 remorse could redeem what I had done! Never- 
 theless, a force that sprang from the soul of my 
 soul compelled me, all shrinking and reluctant, to 
 revisit my vast exploit. 
 
 It was fading. My palace, still complete in every 
 outline, scarcely affected the sight. It was like 
 air against radiant air, dimly gleaming; melting 
 like the dream it was. I walked through it as 
 through the portaled fabric of a luminous cloud. 
 And its treasures lay serried within it, faint in disso- 
 lution. The great gardens were as gardens molded 
 in vapor, and their pathways nothing but beams of 
 some pale effluence. And I could see the forms of 
 the amiable and cultured dilettanti grouped to- 
 gether in the final attitudes of prostration; and 
 over them the drooping trees. And my affrighted 
 
 199 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ear caught the thin desolate piping of music expir- 
 ing in an anguish of beauty; while a faint refulgence 
 on the farthest horizons showed where the majesty 
 of my seas and mountains was dying. 
 
 Yes, she, too, was there. Her bright ebbing was 
 the longest. . . . 
 
 At last I was alone in the infinite vibrating at- 
 mosphere from which the miracle of my creative 
 dream had been drawn, and into which it had again 
 resolved. And then I felt that dissolution awaited 
 me also. And I perceived with the suddenness of 
 a revelation that J had not yet died. I had not, as 
 I thought, been through death. That trifling mu- 
 tation which sloughs the earthly flesh was not 
 death. It was but the first portico, the preliminary 
 warning of the real truth. The real death meant 
 the end of desire, and it now approached. I 
 yearned for it. It was the last of my desires; it 
 was the desire wliich closed desire. In my increas- 
 ing lassitude and loss of strength, I spent tremen- 
 dous force in urging myself into that real death, so 
 that I might know what was beyond it. The pos- 
 session of such knowledge seemed to be a consid- 
 eration dwarfing all others into nullity. 
 
 And it was as if I cast off garment after garment 
 of radiance; and I could see these abandoned shells 
 floating weakly around me in the light. 
 
 200 
 
THE DEATH OF DESIRE 
 
 And then there visited me a beatific ministration 
 — thought shapes that had traveled through im- 
 measurable void to soothe me into unconscious- 
 ness. They were the thoughts of Inez, She was 
 praying for the welfare of my soul. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 BIRTH 
 
 DEATH is an awakening. 
 Familiar and ancient phrase! A survival 
 from the wreck of creeds. One had ceased to re- 
 gard it as possessing an instant significance. One 
 had classed it with the pathetic refuse amidst which 
 it lay. A corpse from which the soul of meaning 
 had escaped! And yet — it is astonishing and por- 
 tentous how the immortal spark will leap out of the 
 white ashes, and burn and blind! The deep truth of 
 the phrase burst upon me in a tremendous disclo- 
 sure. The phrase had been debased in the mouths 
 of fanatics, hypocrites, devotees, and hysterics for 
 thousands of years; and it came to me fresh, vir- 
 gin, and exquisitely apposite. I awoke. I knew 
 what it was to quicken. I knew what it was to 
 emerge from stupor, dream, nightmares, and illu- 
 sion into reality and activity. I had the poignant 
 sense of life. And I viewed all that out of which 
 I had awakened with a pitiful surprise, not violent 
 but gentle. It was without importance, since it 
 
 202 
 
BIRTH 
 
 was over; but, nevertheless, there was something 
 wondrous, something that strangely touched me, 
 in the simple fact that through all that heavy 
 and agitated sleep, sleep which had never light- 
 ened beyond a drowsiness haunted by hallucina- 
 tions, I had not once guessed that I was not awake, 
 that I was not truly born. And all the past, from 
 its dim beginnings on the plane of earth to the last 
 flicker of consciousness in the death of my desires, 
 receded whole, swung backward into the infinitely 
 remote, and became history. 
 
 The limits of honest description are now being 
 reached. I was in life. I knew the real. But I can- 
 not convey the impression of it. No feehng of awe, 
 no hesitation about unveiling the esoteric, pre- 
 vents me, but simply the fundamental impossibility 
 of the feat. All the standards of comparison are 
 now too weakened. 
 
 I had, even in my stupor, moved amidst light, 
 chromatic, prismatic, amidst transparencies and 
 dazzling beauties. I had already, even in the pro- 
 gressive evolution of my dreams and illusions, en- 
 joyed miraculous powers and sensations, pene- 
 trating apparently tp the farthest verge of physical 
 capacities. My nightmares had closed in percep- 
 tions and knowledge that eadier would have 
 seemed incredible of achievement. ... All that — 
 14 203 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 in the adequate relation of which I have already 
 failed, and must have failed, even with a glittering 
 mosaic of superlatives — all that was nothing! All 
 that was dull, heavy, dingy, leaden, inert, lifeless. 
 
 Imagine intensity. . . . 
 
 See ! Imagine the central living fires of a furnace, 
 white-glowing (or what you call white, for it is 
 utterly dififerent from the white of snow), shades 
 of light passing over them and through them, 
 wavering hues of no color! Imagine the depths of 
 that terrific vitality, upon which your eye dare not 
 rest; upon which even your imagination dare not 
 rest for long, lest the thrill should frighten you! 
 Imagine this intensity, and this light that varies 
 yet is without color! But use your imagination with 
 skill and mastery. Let it separate the blasting de- 
 structiveness of heat from this light and this in- 
 tensity. . . . 
 
 The brain must accustom itself. A world of 
 light and intensity. . . . 
 
 A world not of color. 
 
 With that, a world of lightness! Not immaterial, 
 because that which is immaterial cannot be con- 
 ceived. But matter refined to a tenuity far sur- 
 passing the ethereality of the plane from which I 
 had awakened. And yet broadly divisible into the 
 three degrees. And exceedingly complex in its 
 
 204 
 
BIRTH 
 
 organization; functioning in ten thousand novel 
 ways; expending energy as it were in an ecstatic 
 intoxication of irrepressible vitality. . . . Pulsat- 
 ing with currents of vibration that flashed through, 
 modifying themselves innumerable times in a mo- 
 ment! A world of instant responsiveness, of an- 
 swer darting to impulse with the speed of per- 
 fect sensibility. . . . A-throb! 
 
 Beings, Hke myself, in this intense environment, 
 centers of still more intense vitality; unnumbered! 
 A few outshining the rest in the brightness of their 
 intensity and the bewildering manifestations of 
 their life. And here and there, scarcely discernible 
 in glory, greater beings, beings whose glory itself 
 veiled them, and who freely passed into and from 
 a vast, indistinguishable, radiating nucleus of force 
 and light which their lesser companions seldom ap- 
 proached. In my sleep I had seen one such 
 greater being and had fled in illusory fear, fear 
 from which I was delivered. 
 
 This immeasurable universe of beings was in the 
 eternal and blissful throe of intense intercommu- 
 nication! What actuated it, what threw it into its 
 fervor of life, was a sort of sublime frenzy of urgent 
 mutual sympathy. The intercommunication was 
 immediate, the exchange of thought instantaneous 
 in this environment of absolute responsiveness. It 
 
 205 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 went on incessantly, universally, and with an ulti- 
 mate vehemence. It was an everlasting efferves- 
 cence and ebullition. . . . Imagine the sentient 
 atoms of some ineffable whole, separated through 
 asons, and then rejoining, yearning in an endless 
 spasm toward a supreme coalescence. ... At mo- 
 ments it seemed as if the coalescence was accom- 
 plished. Beings and environment seemed to merge 
 into an invisible unity. . . . Then the atoms would 
 break apart and resolve again, and the vehicle in 
 which they moved would whitely glisten once 
 more with those lovely geometric figures that were 
 apparently their abstract conceptions, static. 
 
 Imagine the solemn calm of this intense life, if 
 you can. . . . 
 
 And I ! What and how was I, atom in this con- 
 course? When the swimmer unclothes, and aban- 
 dons himself to the water, naked, letting the water 
 caress the whole of his nakedness, moving his limbs 
 in voluptuous ease untrammeled by even the light- 
 est garment, then, as never under other conditions, 
 he is aware of his body; and perhaps the thought 
 occurs to him that to live otherwise than in that 
 naked freedom is not to live. ... So was I aware 
 for the first time of my body, elastic, responsive, 
 and free. So I 'had at last cast off the hard, stiff, 
 encumbering cases which in my visions of delusion 
 
 206 
 
BIRTH 
 
 I had accepted for my body. Astounding that 
 even in a stupor of the senses I could have sup- 
 posed that those gross, unresponsive envelopes 
 were my body! Astounding that the spark of life 
 should have survived those stifling imprisonments. 
 . . . Now I had a vivid joy in my body, whose 
 form, in its eternal changefulness, maintained a 
 constant surprise of pure beauty. Its plasticity 
 under the function of thought was an ever-renewed 
 miracle of curves. It was the creature and the il- 
 lustration of my thought and of the thoughts which 
 impinged on it. It thrilled from moment to mo- 
 ment into new and yet individual contours. It was 
 always I, but I was never the same. In brief, life! 
 . , . But, above all, the sense of liberty found, the 
 exquisite enfranchisement from grossness! Free 
 hfe! . . . The mere incomparable Miss of knowing 
 what real life was ! 
 
 Beyond this new and exciting experience of the 
 reality of life, overshadowing it, reducing it to the 
 function of a basis, was the sense of companionship 
 of partaking in a vast and profound communion, of 
 utter giving and utter receiving, of transcendent 
 interpenetration of spirit by spirit. . . . The dou- 
 ble bliss of realizing myself and of simultaneously 
 merging it in others! . . . Intimacy more raptur- 
 ous, surrender more complete, than the closest in- 
 
 207 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 timacy or the most unreflecting surrender on the 
 lower planes. . . . No desire but to outpour, to 
 enrich the universal from the vase of the soul, to 
 restore that which in the origin had been be- 
 queathed. All joy seemed to be here, and this joy 
 was the excuse and justification for the exultant 
 joy in the discovery of the self. The value 'oi the 
 treasure was only potential till the treasure was lav- 
 ished in an ardor of altruistic beneficence. The 
 sublime instinct of the self was to plunge, melt, and 
 be lost. This was the last supreme impulse of the 
 primal urgency toward reality and truth. This was 
 bliss. 
 
 Imagine this fever, this rit)t of emotion, directed 
 and controlled by intellectual forces of a strength, 
 a subtlety, and a complexity all surpassing experi- 
 ence, having gathered up into themselves the whole 
 harvest of experience. Imagine reason and rap- 
 ture in sublime coordination! . . . No! You can- 
 not. Failing myself in the impossible, I am ask- 
 ing you to succeed in it. No gallantry of the brain 
 can cross the spaceless gulf between two planes. I 
 relinquish. . . . And yet, all planes are One, and 
 there is in you that which may divine the inex- 
 pressible. 
 
 Imagine the uncolored light, intensely wavering; 
 the plastic beauty of forms mutually responsive in 
 
 208 
 
BIRTH 
 
 the sensitive fineness of the medium; the greater be- 
 ings, veiled in films of splendor; the realization of 
 selves in freedom; the play of pure intellect; the 
 fierce and calm rapture of universal communion; 
 the sublime crisis in the yearning toward ultimate 
 unity! Bliss! . . . Can you? 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE PAST 
 
 IN the tremendous calm of one of those periods of 
 apparent coalescence, when all the marvelous 
 faculties of the freed organism were more marvel- 
 ously intensified and enlarged, I could review my 
 careers from birth. I mean the birth into the earthly 
 body. I saw what you call my life from beginning 
 to end, as the winding course of a river seen from a 
 high mountain. I saw it equally in detail and as a 
 whole; day by day and simultaneously. It was for 
 me, as I chose, either forty years of minute acts, or 
 a single gesture passing in an instant of time. It 
 seemed to me — ^not a tragedy, for I knew the sequel 
 of it, but nevertheless tragic in quality ; and exceed- 
 ingly strange. Doubly strange! Strange in itself, 
 and strange in my attitude toward it while I was 
 living it! A disconcerting — even a shocking — and 
 a revealing strangeness! 
 
 The casing of this " me " in a colored envelope 
 which though fluid (and not unresponsive) was in- 
 finitely less so than myself — that alone was an as- 
 
 2IO 
 
THE PAST 
 
 tonishing imprisonment; but that this casing should 
 be interpenetrated by another, of an impossible gross- 
 ness, heaviness, dullness. ..." Strange " was a 
 word inadequate. Understand me — I say " casing " 
 in no tone of scorn for these envelopes. I recognized 
 that they were a vital extension of me, that they 
 lived by a separate life which, however, had its origin 
 in me. But what a prison for me ! Earthly fancy 
 had never constructed or even conceived a prison to 
 vie with this prison ! What a living burial ! I whose 
 progressive evolution could work itself out by none 
 but the finest vibrations — I had thrilled in vain 
 against these callous walls. And what communica- 
 tion from beyond could ever reach me through them ? 
 They were impenetrable. I had been cut off from 
 intercourse. I had been reduced to a sort of coma 
 of futility while these living envelopes went their 
 ways, unguided. I had been helpless. And yet riot 
 utterly helpless — for at rare intervals, by some for- 
 tunate coincidence of circumstances, I was able to 
 give a fleeting signal of myself, or to catch a vibra- 
 tion fine enough to affect me. But for the most 
 part — numbness ! 
 
 Such was the experience, the ordeal, through 
 which had lain the path of my evolution. 
 
 The immediate commencement appeared less 
 pathetic than what followed. In the immediate com- 
 
 211 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 mencement I was utterly dependent; my separately 
 living body was utterly dependent. There was no 
 choice in any matter. On earth the existence of 
 the infant had always struck me as extraordinarily 
 pathetic in its dependence. But now, the more 
 poignant pathos showed in the first stirrings of in- 
 dependence, in the first attempts to use that ineffa- 
 bly clumsy instrument, the body — its disabilities, 
 its disadvantages, were so overpowering. Always 
 preoccupied by its gross needs! Unable to live 
 through more than a few hours unassisted! Stiff 
 and hard ! And yet how fragile ! Continually in mor- 
 tal danger! Slow and ineffective in movement, deaf 
 to the whole range of sounds except the coarsest and 
 nearest 1 Blind to everything except the outer sur- 
 faces of a few objects close at hand ! Insensible to 
 almost all vibrations! Stumbling, blundering! . . . 
 The vision might have been less painful had I been 
 alone in my limitations. But I had been one of mil- 
 lions of deaf, sightless, groping, maladroit entities 
 that jostled each other obstinately and uselessly in 
 the midst of a wondrous universe hidden from them. 
 Yes, it had the look of a tragedy ! 
 
 I saw myself, in my moving prison, starved, nulli- 
 fied ; unable to transmit to my envelope the perfected 
 potential faculties that were within. 
 
 Even what my enveloping and inferior conscious- 
 
 212 
 
THE PAST 
 
 ness did see and did hear and did feel, it saw and 
 heard and felt wrongly. It was continually victim- 
 ized by illusions and delusions. It had no perception 
 of reality at all. It was wrong, wrong, and grew 
 more inextricably wrong. The main idea underly- 
 ing all its activity was wrong : the idea of gathering 
 in instead of giving out. Its desires multiplied. Its 
 imagined well-being depended on a daily increasing 
 number of external things. That these multifarious 
 things in no manner actually contributed to its well- 
 being did not in the least discourage its obstinacy. 
 The direction was diametrically wrong, and it hur- 
 ried faster and faster in that direction, not heeding 
 the obstacles it met and the hurts it received. Its 
 wrong-headedness, seen as I saw it afterwards in 
 that tremendous calm of freedom, was barely credi- 
 ble. Its steady cultivation of desire, with the in- 
 evitable result of an accumulation of discontent, was 
 distressing for the mere stupidity of it. Then, the 
 touching — ^yes, the touching — confidence in the 
 potency of externals — externals that could never un- 
 der any circumstances be assimilated. And, worst, 
 the persistent unwearied attempts toward self- 
 aggrandizement of all kinds, toward the creation 
 of a wall between the self and its fellows, toward 
 the centralization of the self upon itself; whereas 
 the sole way of progress was so obviously in com- 
 
 213 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 munion, in unifying, in the rich outpouring of the 
 self. 
 
 I scanned all that incarnation, and could note 
 scarcely an odd hour here and there in the long 
 reaches of the years that had not been devoted to a 
 thickening of the prison barriers, and to the weaving 
 of despair. Not one act in a million was an act of 
 communion, of outpouring. And so I followed the 
 course of my infatuated career till it came to a pause 
 on the deathbed in Palace Court Mansions; and I 
 could see that unqualifiable sight. . . . Consequence 
 of an accident brought about by the morbid fever of 
 desire, by the appalling determination to aggrandize 
 and so isolate the self, by a ceaseless and violent ego- 
 tism. There I saw the coarser envelope lying; fit 
 symbol in its grotesque and futile seeming; sur- 
 rounded by the extraordinary and complex appara- 
 tus which had been gradually collected together 
 under the fixed delusion that such playthings were 
 an aid to happiness ! The childishness of it ! The 
 facile, inconstant joy in trifles ! The inability to en- 
 visage a simpler, deeper, and larger joy! The 
 strange conviction that bliss must be complex, 
 changeful, fleeting, dependent on externals, and 
 strictly personal ; and that the absence of these quali- 
 ties would involve monotony and tedium! ... I 
 saw that coarse shape lying with the bandage round 
 
 214 
 
THE PAST 
 
 its head, and the coins covering those eyes that had 
 never seen, and wondered at the passionate epic 
 which its own ineptitude had prematurely closed. 
 Oh, heedless one ! In vain had those ears heard the 
 beginning of wisdom which somehow had got it- 
 self fairly translated into the gross medium of 
 speech: 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven is within you ! " 
 And what of the imprisoned " me " ? I was al- 
 most as I had been at the inception of the ordeal. 
 Not much worse, and very little better. I had been 
 protected by the coarseness of the envelope, whose 
 slow and heavy vibrations could not affect me. The 
 immensely greater part of all that violence and that 
 superficial but genuine unhappiness had resulted in 
 nothing whatever, stultifying itself. The " me " was 
 but atrophied by inactivity. And at moments, early 
 in that life, when the envelope had responded to the 
 incitement of youthful, uncalculating generosities, 
 and later, in certain disinterested and careless out- 
 pourings of ideas concerning beauty in music — ^at 
 those moments the essential " me " had developed in 
 a swift blossoming. The growth was little, gravely 
 little. But growth there had been, despite the ap- 
 parent froward conspiracy against it. 
 
 I saw the earthly envelope, precisely as it must 
 have been ages before — on that bed in Palace Court 
 
 215 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Mansions, with its violet gaseous counterpart float- 
 ing still above it. My vision could not pursue it into 
 its decay and dissolution. My vision was arrested 
 at that point, attracted thenceforward to the vicissi- 
 tudes of the other envelope, more ethereal and ra- 
 diant. I gazed at the earthly envelope, not sadly, not 
 reproachfully. It had served. 
 
 My second life, that long dalliance in a brighter 
 world of color and illusion, seemed to me now to 
 be even more pathetic than the grosser brief career 
 that preceded it. At any rate, during the latter, no 
 part of my consciousness had ever imagined itself 
 to be in a heaven ; nor had mistaken its own creations 
 for independent organisms; nor had drugged itself 
 with a conceit of its own perfection. I saw that this 
 second life, with all its relative fineness, had been 
 nothing but an exquisite atonement for the grand 
 error of the other. In the first gross years (up to 
 the moment when the coins were put on the eyes of 
 the heavy envelope), instead of working toward 
 freedom, I had steadily thickened the radiant walls 
 of that prison of the " me." Nearly all that elegant 
 preoccupation with art and beauty, all that refining 
 upon refinements, all that fastidious rejection of the 
 common ugly, had been based in desire, tending to 
 isolation instead of to communion. The bright bar- 
 
 216 
 
THE PAST 
 
 riers that shut in the " me " had year by year grown 
 more impervious. 
 
 They had had to wear themselves away in the 
 fabrication of delicious but humiliating illusions. 
 And during the ages of this atonement, the hour of 
 my freedom had been delayed, until at last, amidst 
 the wreck of those real dreams, the shell broke, and I 
 was born. 
 
 Now I could see the fragments of that shell float- 
 ing in the universe which I had once deemed lumi- 
 nous, and in its essence rapturously alive. . . . Dull, 
 garish, slack, inert! . . . Strange, the formidable 
 power of self-deception ! The strangest thing of all 
 in all that universe was not that I had accepted a 
 mere harsh glitter as absolute beauty, nor that I had 
 amused myself so childishly with vain toys, but that 
 I had remained so long and so completely in the con- 
 viction that bliss could alone proceed from the satis- 
 faction of desire. 
 
 All these matters I perceived simultaneously in 
 a single clear and enlightening flash of pure percep- 
 tion, during one of those periods of tremendous calm, 
 when existence itself seemed to be arrested in abso- 
 lute achievement. Then existence resumed, and 
 
 217 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 those visions of the past faded baclc into their true 
 unimportance. 
 
 The least marvelous of the beings in that state 
 was very marvelous, and consciously so. There was 
 a universal exaltation in the use of fine faculties. 
 Degrees, however, existed. I counted myself mid- 
 way on the ladder of degrees. I beheld those who 
 were certainly below me, considerable in number. 
 But also, I beheld those, considerable, too, in num- 
 ber, who in responsiveness, in elasticity, in rapidity 
 of action, in the intense beauty of their outpouring, 
 were incomparably my superiors. And there were, 
 apart, the greater intelligences. I was with the large 
 majority, I, who in the double envelope of bodies had 
 masqueraded as a spiritual aristocrat! To think 
 that I had failed to achieve a perfection which others 
 had achieved and which might have been mine, 
 grieved me. Grief was there. Grief was in that 
 rapture ; felt like a recondite dissonance in a chord of 
 emotion ; but pacified by the omnipresent and ardent 
 sympathy which was the very atmosphere. 
 
 And I approached the nucleus. Although at any 
 given moment few were entering it, the experience 
 was withheld from none. Soon or late each being 
 vanished into the invisible splendor of the nucleus, 
 for a space of time long or short. 
 
 218 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 NO sensation of motion on my part. . . . But an 
 increase of light; till light seemed gradually 
 to become the absence of light, the complete absence 
 of all phenomena whatever. . . . An ineffable so- 
 lemnity inspired me, and a sublime apprehension, in 
 the nature of fear, but greater than fear. . . . Dis- 
 appearance of the last of those perfect companions. 
 . . . Loneliness, and a torrent rushing under me. 
 ... A consciousness of the divine brooding which 
 is without and beyond form. . . . The supreme ad- 
 venture ! 
 
 And then a cognition, startling, reassuring, that 
 this was not happening to me for the first time, that 
 I was no stranger in that solemnity, but a visitant 
 since everlasting. 
 
 And in the ecstatic void the vision of the whole 
 cycle of my existence began to be revealed to me, 
 rolling itself backward into the unguessed deeps of 
 the past, so that I might learn. I saw the endless 
 series of my lives, recurring and recurring in se- 
 15 219 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 quences of three — the imprisonment in the double 
 envelope, the partial freedom of the single radiant 
 envelope, and the freedom. The last an ageless real- 
 ization, the second a long purgation, the first an 
 ordeal brief, but full of fate! 
 
 My perception was not now abruptly balked at the 
 birth of the human soul known on the earth as Mor- 
 rice Loring. I descried that out of which Morrice 
 Loring came. I saw, amidst the recurring epochs, 
 incarnations far other than his. Morrice Loring was 
 no more to me than uncounted other envelopes of 
 flesh. I ceased to be Morrice Loring and became a 
 legion. These lives flashed up before me one an- 
 terior to another, mere moments between the vast 
 periods that separated them. They twinkled and 
 were gone, like shooting stars in the spirituality of 
 the night. But, in the perfection of my faculties, I 
 beheld them in detail as, before, I had beheld the one 
 life. I could distinguish the hairs on the rough chest 
 of a camel, the colors of the iridescence of ice, the 
 glint of a sun on a piece of stuff, the gradations 
 in the pupil of the eye of a young girl. I could trace 
 the fall and rise to and from an explosion of wrath, 
 the slow birth of a wish, and the spark of an intui- 
 tion, the sudden resolve of renunciations, the lightest 
 influence of an induced mood. And one life was 
 not clearer to me than another. And one life was 
 
 220 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 not more important to me than another. All were 
 equally indispensable and disciplinal. The variety 
 of those imprisonments seemed endless. Some were 
 fevers of desire; others had almost the calmness of 
 a final wisdom. Some were cruel ; some were kind. 
 In some the double barriers were so thin that the 
 immortal prisoner shone through them; and men 
 wondered. And in the next the walls might be 
 hopelessly thick again. . . . Undulations in the 
 curve of evolution. . . . 
 
 But as the remoter past swam toward me in the 
 vision, the development of that prisoner which was 
 I showed unmistakable. He had seemed to be help- 
 lessly isolated in the prison named Morrice Loring, 
 but in the light of comparison it was not so. Far 
 back in the chain his captivity had far more closely 
 resembled death, and his powers had far more closely 
 resembled utter impotence. I could see him held fast 
 in the grossness of bodies whose crude savagery 
 would have shocked Morrice Loring into inanition. 
 I could see him borne within organisms of astound- 
 ing coarseness that fought naked amidst primitive 
 dangers to preserve the horror of their lives. 
 
 Astounding, did I say? Primitive? . . . All this 
 was naught. All this was not even the beginning 
 of astonishment nor the end of the prime. Still 
 further in the past, I 'saw that divine prisoner within 
 
 221 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the forms of roaming and solitary animals, in out- 
 rageous landscapes where there was no man, at an 
 epoch when man existed only in the creative thought. 
 And the forms of those animals waxed and waned 
 in size, and waned and waxed, now leviathan, now 
 trivial; and becoming ever stranger and stranger. 
 And still at each dissolution of the prison a radiant 
 envelope escaped, and the prisoner escaped from the 
 radiance into the uncolored light, and ultimately 
 gazed amidst an invisible splendor, as now he gazed 
 at the spectacle of his evolution, to gather the harvest 
 of experience. 
 
 And I saw that once, by some apparent hazard, 
 he was flung back into the identical prison from 
 which he had been set free, the envelope waiting in 
 suspension to receive the disconcerted prisoner. And 
 this accident occurred more than once. 
 
 I hurried flying through the vision of eternal time, 
 driven by the divine curiosity to learn the origin 
 of these ceaseless mutations, to arrive at the first of 
 them and know the absolute fount from which I had 
 sprung. I sought also to gaze forward into the 
 future ; for I knew that when I should have assimi- 
 lated the latest of my experience I must enter an- 
 other prison, and I hoped that I might discern it, 
 even if dimly. But no! This faculty was not mine. 
 And so I pressed backward. 
 
 222 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 And even all this was naught to that which, lying 
 farther behind, rolled later into my view. In the 
 twinkling of recurrent incarnations, a point came 
 when the immortal prisoner, subdivided, was in- 
 closed in many prisons simultaneously, instead of in 
 one. Flying organisms. . . . Not birds. . . . Flocks 
 that winged clumsily over an earth desolate and 
 seemingly lifeless, but for them. Congregations of 
 bodies bound by a collective will that dominated, 
 though not completely, the separate parts. . . . Play 
 of dull yet powerful instincts exercising themselves 
 in large, confused, and concerted activities! . . . 
 And as the incarnations passed before me, each dis- 
 closing an earlier one, the division of the prisoner 
 grew more and more minute, and the multitudinous 
 organisms more and more simple, homogeneous, 
 and less and less intelligent. . . . Until at length 
 I was scattered for instants incredibly brief, shed 
 abroad and yet indivisible, among myriads of al- 
 most exactly similar organisms that performed one 
 act and died fulfilled. And the incarnations fol- 
 lowed in a sequence of accelerating speed. 
 
 The globe upon which they groped was liquid, 
 with here and there portions congealing. And my 
 prisons innumerable could only exist in the intense 
 heat which it exhaled. And this heat grew fiercer. 
 . . . And in the past of still remoter incarnations the 
 
 223 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 globe was a sphere of wreathing gases, white, but 
 with a gross whiteness. And the incarnations were 
 still swifter. And the gaseous sphere wreathed 
 larger, spinning amorphous, the abode of transient 
 life-manifestations of which I alone gave force to 
 millions. . . . The dizXy vision stirred me as I 
 watched it into a profound agitation. I thought: I 
 am surely approaching the origin and fount of un- 
 created perfection from which I sprang. 
 
 Then a cataclysm : a cosmic collision and disaster. 
 And, perceiving the phenomena in the inverse order 
 of their occurrence, I saw two worlds receding ter- 
 rifically from one another, stone-cold and rigid as 
 stone. 
 
 And myself, no more dispersed, but more than ever 
 rigorously captive, voyaging on the larger of them! 
 
 The incarnations now were comparatively very 
 long. And there might have seemed to be no symp- 
 tom of activity either in the prisoner or in his prison- 
 ing envelopes. The world might have been locked 
 in an unthinkable death. But it was not. It had 
 only been approaching the impossible, and I watched 
 it, in my vision, back toward life. I, as I saw my- 
 self, had at that stage sunk into a kind of stupor ; I 
 resembled a seed in winter. I bore within me all 
 the past and all the future, but naught moved. And 
 I watched myself, through again innumerable in- 
 
 224 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 carnations, farther through the recesses of the past, 
 back into an intense and complex activity surpassing 
 my highest condition previous to the cataclysm, and 
 of an entirely different order from it. And in a rapid 
 stream of twinkling incarnations, I retraced a 
 strange succession of civilizations from their decline 
 to their glory, and from their glory to their birth, 
 on and on to an apogee of achievement. 
 
 And here, though that past was more distant than 
 the faintest speck of star left behind in the lightning 
 rush of systems through millions of aeons, I could see 
 it all to the minutest detail in my vision. . . . Other 
 beings ! Another race of beings ! Other landscapes ! 
 But the same laws! And the same supreme law! 
 I could still follow a wish to its birth. I could still 
 observe the ravages of desire ! If my prisons were 
 metamorphosed, I was still individually I, yet pos- 
 sessing attributes which I had since lost or which 
 had since folded themselves within me in dormancy. 
 Then the curve of evolution, always undulating, de- 
 scended once- more, and that world, too, shot on- 
 ward into the past toward its sudden birth in the 
 heat of starry collision. And again I saw two frigid 
 spheres rushing into separation. 
 
 And I was still individual. 
 
 And thence backward the birth and death of 
 worlds twinkled in a sequence as rapid and as clear 
 
 225 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 as the sequence of my own incarnations had been. 
 And I could follow the vast arching of the curve 
 of evolution. And that curve, immense as it was, 
 dwindled to be one of countless undulations in an 
 infinitely mightier curve that gradually began to 
 shape itself to my watching and awed sight. And 
 I saw myself, diviner, rising on the great curve 
 whose foot and whose summit were alike invisible, 
 toward the ultimate beginning. And I would thrill 
 in passionate anticipation of the revealing vision to 
 come. . . . Then the summit of the curve would 
 emerge clear, and it would bend downward — with- 
 out having attained. ... To soar again! I could 
 see that the modifications in me were profound and 
 tremendous, under the eternal ordeal of desire and 
 its purgation. But modifications of what? Point- 
 ing to what? . . .. Why . . . ? 
 
 Then I noticed that the shocks which marked the 
 birth and the death of universes grew less violent, 
 and their results less positive. The succeeding days 
 of civilization and nights of black and icy stupor 
 were not so sharply divided each from each. The 
 wavy course of time was tranquilized into a 
 smoother path. And my incarnations were less im- 
 prisoning. The transitions from the state of free- 
 dom to the radiant envelope, and from the radiant 
 envelope to the grosser body — especially the latter — 
 
 226 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 were less abrupt and less clearly differentiated. 
 There came an epoch when I never, during the com- 
 plete cycle of an incarnation, entirely lost the con- 
 sciousness of my real, central self, when that self 
 never ceased knowingly and effectively to react 
 upon its envelopes. . . . 
 
 The curve was now mounting upward, and at an 
 angle bolder than any before. And in its flight the 
 curve undulated far less than it had ever done. 
 
 And on the lower physical plane there was noth- 
 ing solid. Matter remained fluid. And Hying or- 
 ganisms had a fluidity that was nearer the gaseous 
 than the liquid. And the movement of these organ- 
 isms was beautiful in its yielding and swift plastic- 
 ity, resembling the activity of the radiant plane. 
 And universes intermingled in their vague orbits, 
 mutually unharming. And the varieties of the phe- 
 nomena decreased in number, and there proceeded 
 a great and comprehensive simplification. 
 
 And then the disappearance of liquid matter fol- 
 lowed the disappearance of solid. And the elements 
 resolved into one another, lightening; and the va- 
 rieties of phenomena still decreased. And even the 
 lower physical plane acquired radiance, until its 
 highest intensity approached the lowest intensity of 
 the radiant plane, and for brief instants the two 
 might be indistinguishable. 
 
 227 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I shook, watching the vision. For I now saw 
 myself indubitably reaching back to my far fount 
 and origin. I saw in myself the awaking out of 
 quiescence of wondrous qualities, and still more 
 wondrous. I saw in myself a creature nearer a di- 
 vine absolute than even the great intelligences whose 
 presence I felt around me in the nucleus. 
 
 And my incarnations were no longer imprison- 
 ments, but gentle and soft veilings in transient clouds 
 of desire; little intervals of illusion out of which I 
 emerged as from a waking dream. That terrible 
 perverse impulse toward separation, that impulse 
 which had so fatally vitiated the careers of Morrice 
 Loring and of his predecessors backward through 
 eternities of past, was scarcely felt now — a mere 
 faint, fleeting tendency to draw away, vanquished 
 in an instant by the mighty original force of co- 
 hesion. 
 
 The universes of the lower plane became one, and 
 cataclysms and transitions, and even movement 
 ceased. Nothing but a uniform vibration marked 
 the life of the plane. The elements, further resolving 
 into one another, had become one element. Light 
 grew, and, in the growth of light, the weight of 
 grossness faded. The unique gaseous element spent 
 itself in a continuous and ardent expansion. It had 
 no longer the materiality of gas. ... It escaped 
 
 228 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 from the dominion of its own perceptiveness, and 
 was lost in the plane of the radiant. 
 
 It was the birth of matter that I had been watch- 
 ing. 
 
 The curve of evolution shot still more boldly up- 
 ward. 
 
 And in the radiant plane I witnessed myself easily 
 purging away the trivial illusions of what had been 
 the first of all my incarnations — illusions removed 
 scarce appreciably from absolute reality. Then came 
 the first incarnation — a reverie — and then I was in 
 the radiant plane again, where the activity of desire 
 was yet unknown. And then the iridescences, the 
 chromatic complexities of the radiant plane began 
 to simplify themselves in a growing brightness. And 
 the buoyant atmosphere of that plane, compared to 
 which the ether of gross physical conceptions is 
 heavy and rigid as metal — ^this atmosphere in its turn 
 expanded toward its still less rnaterial source. And 
 its colors died in the dazzling luminance of original 
 light. Yet a little, and my vision had reached a 
 moment before even the radiant plane had begun to 
 exist. . . . 
 
 And the spirit had no home but its fellow-spirit. 
 
 We communed, equal in the first freshness of our 
 origin. And our communion was far completer than 
 that between the most advanced of the companions 
 
 229 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 •whiom I had quitted in order to enter into the 
 nucleus. And our joy more intense! 
 
 The vision overpowered me. I saw myself in the 
 very dawn of the divine. The communion of those 
 unnamable creatures thrilled into a true coales- 
 cence, and surpassed it. And the being that was 
 myself gazed with unclouded eye at the source of 
 light and awe, gazing within. And with a sigh of 
 supreme transport I began to yield up my melting 
 individuality in exchange for the final self-knowl- 
 edge in which resides the clew to the enigma. . . . 
 I throbbed to the prime pulsations of timeless ex- 
 istence. ... I saw ... I became . . . 
 
 The pulsations resolved themselves, with mysteri- 
 ous and formidable portent, into the vast reiteiated 
 summoning of a titantic gong that announced the 
 unimagined. . . . 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 ACCIDENT 
 
 EXTRAORDINARILY skilled and efficient 
 though my senses were, I at first thought that 
 the reverberations of that unseen gong were a part 
 of the vision which was passing before me; and I 
 was mistaken. The mere perception of my error 
 shook me. I trembled with forebodings, and I was 
 distracted from the vision. The vision sank away 
 from my sight — or perhaps my faculties were now 
 unable to hold it. I was alone in the tremendous 
 calm of the nucleus. And under the persistent toll- 
 ing I began to retrace the past — actually to re- 
 trace it. I had followed the past up to its source, 
 in my marvelous and reveaHng vision. But that 
 pursuit had been a vision, and for a vision I posi- 
 tively knew it. But now I was myself, in reality 
 traveling backward through the moments — the 
 years, the ages, perhaps — that I had spent in the 
 nucleus. And this happened against my wish, 
 against my command, against my instincts. I tried 
 
 231 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 passionately to arrest my course — ^the whole secret 
 force of my being yearned toward the vision whose 
 ineffable climax had been snatched from me — ^but 
 I was powerless. 
 
 The gong grew louder; and it grew into a horri- 
 ble torture. It seemed to be ripping harshly 
 through the delicate veils that separate that which 
 the eye may view from that which is too vile for 
 sight. Veil after veil it seemed to tear asunder, 
 growing still louder. And then I made the dis- 
 covery, which debased the just pride in me, that 
 the strident sound of the gong was not in the plane 
 of the nucleus. It came from elsewhere. It was 
 invading the forbidden and immaculate solemnity 
 of the nucleus; sacrilegiously; with an arrogant 
 summons for me. And I was afraid, dropping 
 the incomparable dignity which clothes those who 
 enter the nucleus, dropping my self-respect, and 
 yielding openly to fear. I struggled hysterically 
 with the influence that was pushing me backward 
 through my own history, and reached out desper- 
 ately to the faded vision. Futile! I myself, under 
 the sinister iteration of the gong, felt like an unholy 
 trespasser in the invisible splendor that surrounded 
 me. . . . 
 
 The invisible deteriorated into the visible. I 
 emerged on the confines of the nucleus. Greater 
 
 232 
 
ACCIDENT 
 
 intelligences loomed indistinct in their own efflu- 
 ence. They watched me. They saw my plight. 
 They must have known that I was the victim of an 
 obscene intrusion, that every law had been chal- 
 lenged by the power which was seducing me away. 
 In the effort to obtain their sympathy I seemed to 
 consume all my vitality. But they made no sign. 
 And I was swept on, the gong still clanging its 
 menace, and now I saw the nucleus from without, 
 as the indiscernible core of the pure intensity of 
 light that was the atmosphere of the plane in which 
 I had found freedom. The entities who also had 
 achieved that plane were living still their shining 
 existence of emotion and reason wrought together 
 in an exquisite responsiveness. This was my nat- 
 ural home. Mine was the right to remain there for 
 ages yet. But I was hurried on, passing inversely 
 through all the sensations which I had experienced 
 there, tasting bliss in torment. And to these com- 
 panions, too, I offered the tragic plaintiveness of 
 my appeal for aid; but none answered. And under 
 the enchantment of the gong, I surged helpless 
 along, clutching, fighting. And at length the 
 strokes of the gong sounded fainter, and still 
 fainter. I was reentering the sleep from which I 
 had awakened into freedom, awakened into birth. 
 Life left me. But in the pre-natal state I could 
 
 233 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 hear the muffled, obstinate, destructive summons of 
 the gong. 
 
 The prismatic and airy fluid of the radiant plane 
 was vibrating about me when I became conscious 
 again. And the gong was relentlessly striking its 
 note that jarred through me and through the at- 
 mosphere. It was not yet satisfied. It still dragged 
 me implacably on. It was still rending the veils 
 that should not be rent. And as it had been for- 
 eign to the plane beyond, so also was it foreign to 
 the radiant plane. I had followed its mandate, but 
 it still came from elsewhere, uncanny, and horribly 
 discordant. 
 
 The medium in which I moved seemed to me 
 just as beautiful as when I had quitted it. . . . That 
 was part of the tragedy. ... I had no sensation 
 of being imprisoned in something heavier, duller, 
 less responsive than myself. . . . That, too, was 
 part of the tragedy. My consciousness was trans- 
 ferred to the thin, worn shells of radiant matter 
 that enveloped the true entity which had returned 
 from beyond. These shells were the only conscious 
 " me." My memory of the divine birth and the 
 divine adventure and the glimpse was already 
 dimmed and tarnished. But it nevertheless re- 
 mained in my consciousness, and by it — not by di- 
 
 234 
 
ACCIDENT 
 
 rect perception — I knew that the authentic and 
 eternal " me " was a fast and silent prisoner within 
 the external shells of consciousness. I no longer 
 struggled backward toward that from which I had 
 been dragged. I was deeply aware of the hopeless- 
 ness of such a struggle. But I did fight to remain 
 where I was, in the moment of pulsating calm, the 
 moment of th« extinction of desire and illusion. 
 
 I could not. The gong crashed through the 
 mystic chromatic barriers and found me. 
 
 And at a dizzy speed I, unwilling and fiercely 
 protesting, raced back over my own footsteps in the 
 great field of time. An age was as an instant; 
 ■ eternities were as an instant. The shells of the liv- 
 ing prison grew. She appeared. The beautiful 
 landscapes appeared. The gardens appeared, and 
 the palace. And the music tinkled from an elfin 
 echo into the full resonance of subHme art. The 
 recumbent figures in the gardens arose and spoke 
 once more with their refined and charming voices. 
 The amazing books re-peopled the shelves of the 
 gleaming palace. . . . And my memory, though 
 languishing, said to me: "All these are tawdry 
 playthings." And I knew that they were, while en- 
 joying them. In the periods of reverie I knew 
 this. But I had to retrace, and I did retrace, all 
 the doubts, hesitations, and counterfeit delights 
 16 235 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 through which I had passed on my way to my free- 
 dom. I yielded to illusion, aware of its illusiveness. 
 
 All that came and was gone. Those heavens 
 shot away beneath my furious flight; vanished into 
 the future, while I faced the past. My idyll with 
 the perfect woman of my desire's creation was re- 
 sumed from end to beginning in a flash. All her 
 lovely attitudes, surrenders, acquiescences, discre- 
 tions, audacities were folded into a moment. From 
 the woman she returned into the girl, and the act 
 that made her was undone, and she was not. And 
 I was utterly alone again in the vibrant and irides- 
 cent air, watching the changing colors of it, and the 
 gorgeousness of my own envelope, in a naive won- 
 der. And my memory said to me: " This is garish. 
 This is naught. This is death." And I said: " If 
 only I could remain here, where I am! " 
 
 The gong still boomed its call, but louder. 
 
 A stupor slowly grasped me in its drowsy, cling- 
 ing arms. I fought to loosen myself, for I was 
 thrilled with horror at the apprehension of what 
 awaited me if I could not resist. In vain! . . All 
 phenomena faded save the inexorable uproar of the 
 gong. 
 
 Then roused by something ofifensive and intrin- 
 sive, I perceived, monstrously, a pyramidal summit 
 
 236 
 
ACCIDENT 
 
 sticking up out of vacancy into the radiant air. I 
 stared at it, dazed, puzzled, searching in memory for 
 the answer to its conundrum. It was not strange 
 to me. It was disconcertingly familiar. I fancied 
 that the clangor of the gong came from it, but it 
 was not the home of the gong, though now the 
 sound was deafeningly near. The pyramid was 
 tinted in multifarious dead opaque colors — earthly 
 colors — a travesty of the rainbow, as the rainbow 
 would have been a travesty of hues of that gleam- 
 ing atmosphere. Impossible to imagine aught 
 more utterly revolting than the harsh, dark wound 
 made by the pyramid in ethereal translucency. I 
 stared at it, full of a terrible leisure, and still 
 haunted by the clamor of the summons. I was 
 not flying backward now. The reversal of time 
 had ceased to operate, and the moments as they 
 passed were no longer contrary to me. And im- 
 perceptibly the recognition of the pyramid per- 
 meated my affrighted consciousness like a disease. 
 It was the upper portion of the Albert Memorial, 
 an immoderate unsightliness which even in the 
 most squalid hours of the earthliest Morrice Lor- 
 ing I would always take every possible measure to 
 avoid. 
 
 And I saw momentarily troops of the radiant 
 floating by. They were departing. I, by reason 
 
 237 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 of some accidental propensity in my original be- 
 ing, had escaped too soon and was returning. Not 
 for the first time — according to that revealing vi- 
 sion of mine yonder, was this casualty occurring to 
 me! 
 
 Then I saw the sun — ^your sun, looming somber 
 like a dead star in my radiance. Then the lower 
 plane supervened, shutting off the radiance, and I 
 saw the faint roofs of houses, with thousands of 
 ghostly tin cowls gibbering crooked and bent on 
 their chimneys. And in a canyon between two 
 precipices of houses I saw two streams of people 
 wending in opposite directions, doll-like, afar off 
 and beneath me. Knightsbridge, Parkside, Picca- 
 dilly. . . . The efifect was exceedingly bizarre, for 
 the gross body of every one of these dolls was 
 illuminated by the radiant body, scintillant and 
 prismatic. And though the sun shed its brightness 
 of a summer morning the light of the sun was as 
 darkness to the refulgence of these dolls. The spec- 
 tacle resembled a procession of torches moving 
 of their volition amidst dim architectures. . . . 
 Strange, that those vivid envelopes should excite 
 no wonder! . . . Incredible blindness! 
 
 I knew now the significance of the gong. And I 
 passionately denied it. " No ! " I protested in a 
 fever of refusal, " I will not go. Nothing shall 
 
 238 
 
ACCIDENT 
 
 force me to go. I will wander here forever rather 
 than go. It is against all nature that I should go." 
 
 But I went, slowly, surely, gnashing out my re- 
 luctance. ... I went. . . . 
 
 I was in my study, quivering near the window. 
 The gong ceased. 
 
 I said to myself, without surprise: "That clock 
 has struck eleven!" I knew that the clock had 
 struck eleven. During all the ages of my descent 
 from the crisis of the unfinished revealing vision, 
 the clock in the vestibule had struck eleven. In 
 the background of my exasperated consciousness, 
 I could hear it ticking. But I would not listen to 
 it ticking. I could not. I could not regard with 
 curiosity even the familiarities of my study. For 
 the whole of my faculties were instantly monopo- 
 lized. 
 
 It still lay there — it. And the door showing the 
 bed in the bedchamber was still open. It still lay 
 there, with the penny on one eye and the half- 
 crown on the other, and the handkerchief support- 
 ing the flaccid jaw. . . . Obscene! Not meant to 
 be looked upon! But I could look upon nothing 
 else. 
 
 " Never! " I seemed to cry, fainting in a fearful 
 nausea. " Never! " 
 
 Putrescent clay! Rigid, blighting prison! Grave 
 239 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 of all the finer perceptions! Extinguisher of 
 light! 
 
 Abhorrent basilisk, drawing me — drawing me, 
 by a hypnotism a thousandfold more odious than 
 that of the eye! . . . Drawing me! . . . 
 
 A noise in my muffled ears. Noise of a coin 
 rolling slowly and interminably along a polished 
 floor circling, and then flopping to rest on its side. 
 
BOOK III 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 RETURN 
 
 I WAS alone in the bedroom. And I was glad to 
 find myself alone. For I felt self-conscious, I 
 felt almost ashamed, of my return. I had been 
 dead; I had received the treatment accorded to the 
 dead. My co-dwellers in the flat had adjusted their 
 minds to the fact that I was dead. Shame is a 
 word too strong for the description of my state. 
 But I was aware that I had created an exceedingly 
 awkward situation, which would involve much so- 
 cial discomposure. Hence solitude was grateful to 
 me. I said to myself: " But, of course, a corpse is 
 left alone." The sinister idea that I might, on my 
 return, have opened my eyes in a place quite other 
 than this bedroom, might have vainly struggled 
 against unyielding wood, utter darkness, and sub- 
 terranean silence — this idea did not even occur to 
 me until hours later. 
 
 But scarcely had the coin ceased to roll on the 
 polished floor when I heard noises in the bath- 
 
 241 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 room. The door leading to the bathroom was at 
 the other end of the bedroom from my bed, and on 
 the same wall as the head of the bed. So that, as 
 I lay, I could not see that door without turning on 
 my side and twisting slightly. I knew, however, 
 that it must be open. Then I heard footsteps, 
 quick, hesitating, irregular. Then silence, and 
 then a recommencement of the footsteps. Inez! 
 . . . She was in the room. She was looking at 
 me from my right, at a distance of about sixteen 
 feet. I felt her presence. My eyes were open, but 
 I did not move. Yet it seemed to me that I was 
 capable of the effort of such a movement of the 
 head as would have brought her within my field 
 of vision. There was a conflict of volitions within 
 me. I wished to meet her eyes, and I feared to 
 meet her eyes. So I lay inert, but unmistakably 
 bHnking at the ceiling. I could hear her respira- 
 tion. She came, stumbhng, nearer to me. She 
 passed round the foot of her own bed, seized it 
 with one hand; and we looked at each other. I said 
 to myself: " This is a very trying moment for both 
 of us." Her appearance startled me. She wore a 
 plain morning dress, nearly new, and it had been 
 put on with fastidious care, but on the front of the 
 corsage was a large fresh yellow stain. Her hair 
 was disordered. Her features seemed to have been 
 
 242 
 
RETURN 
 
 modified less by grief than by acute anxiety. And, 
 now, she seemed to be less astonished than caught 
 — caught in some secret act. Her lips were ex- 
 traordinarily swollen, and vermilion red even to 
 rawness. 
 
 Her mouth formed to speak: but she said noth- 
 ing. She was about to laugh, she was about to 
 cry; but she did neither. I felt poignantly sorry 
 for her. But I could not show my pity; could not 
 smile nor speak! I was held back from doing so 
 by some deep instinct of restraint. Her eyes wan- 
 dered, and stopped at a particular point on the 
 floor. I knew that she was looking at the fallen 
 coin. Suddenly she swooped down on the coin, 
 came to her knees, lay nearly flat, and clumsily 
 arose again, the coin in her hand. She seemed 
 ready to faint. I wanted to advise her calmly to 
 be as calm as she possibly could. But I could not 
 persuade myself to speak. 
 
 Then with another sudden hysteric movement, 
 she plunged toward my bed, and knelt down — or 
 dropped to her knees — at my side. I did not move. 
 The other coin had lodged in a fold between the 
 pillow and the sheet. She snatched at it. The two 
 coins clinked together in her hand. She half raised 
 herself, clutching at the bed, and began fumbling 
 round my head with her hands; owing to the coins 
 
 243 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 she could only use finger and thumb of her right 
 hand. I wondered what she was doing, but I did 
 not stir nor protest, though I was very sensitive to 
 contacts and hated to be handled — for example by 
 a barber. Then I understood. She was untying 
 the handkerchief which she had knotted round the 
 jaw of her dead husband to keep it from falling. 
 She drew it away at last, and seemed to try to hide 
 it behind her. 
 
 " I put this round your head because I thought 
 you might be cold," she said, in a peculiar voice, 
 the voice, I should have supposed, of a person in 
 severe physical pain. 
 
 Naturally she desired to conceal from me that 
 she had taken me for dead. It was a feeble at- 
 tempt at deception, quite unconvincing, an obvious 
 failure. It would not have deceived me, I think, 
 even if I had not watched her with my own eyes tie 
 the handkerchief round the head of the corpse, and 
 seal its eyes with the coins. But it was the best she 
 could accomplish in her instinctive shame. 
 
 "Oh! I'm not cold," I whispered. 
 
 This was all we said; this was the whole of our 
 exchange. No splendid phrase, bursting from the 
 heart! No expressive gesture! No pathetic cry! 
 Just a poor little stammering lie, and a banal re- 
 mark! Yet she had wept passionately on the body 
 
 244 
 
RETURN 
 
 of that corpse, and I was assuredly full of an im- 
 mense sympathy for her. 
 
 Without any warning of any kind she turned and 
 ran, staggering, back into the bathroom. She 
 literally ran. And as she went her whole body 
 seemed to heave in a great physical crisis. She 
 banged the door of the bathroom, but it did not 
 latch. I continued to hear noises in the bathroom, 
 now violent, now low and prolonged. I was left 
 alone, neglected, ignored. I had foreseen that my 
 return to Hfe might produce strange manifestations 
 in Inez, but the manifestation which it actually did 
 produce was strange beyond my prevision. I per- 
 ceived once again, as often I had perceived before, 
 that the effect of intense emotion on the human 
 organism is incalculable. 
 
 "The worst is over now!" I thought, with re- 
 lief. 
 
 I glanced about the bedroom, and my eye rested 
 with its old satisfaction on the furniture and the 
 decoration of the room. In front of me, placed 
 specially so that I could always see it as I lay in 
 bed, was a reproduction of Velasquez's " Lady 
 with a Fan." It seemed to me as beautiful as ever. 
 And the Hght that came through the ground glass 
 of the window seemed to me as beautiful, as ever. 
 Often had I watched that window gradually be- 
 
 245 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 tray the dawn. Often had I deeply felt that pure 
 silvery formless light was unsurpassable as a source 
 of ecstatic aesthetic pleasure. And I felt exactly 
 the same now. I did not regard the supernal beau- 
 ties from which I had been exiled as a dream^ or 
 as in the nature of a dream. I knew that they were 
 all as real as the coins which Inez had picked up, 
 and as the bell cord at my shoulder. I remembered 
 that, during the period when I experienced those 
 other beauties, every earthly phenomena had ap- 
 peared to me gross, ugly, tawdry. Yet now my 
 bedroom, and this common earthly light, did not 
 lose by any comparison. 
 
 Nor had I the sensation of being a prisoner in 
 my body. And my body did not seem heavy, hard, 
 and unresponsive. I was not surprised that I had 
 no perception of any kind of a radiant body in- 
 closing the opaque. A few minutes earlier I had 
 seen, veritably seen, all the wayfarers in Knights- 
 bridge incandescent like torches shaming the sun, 
 and had marveled at their blindness to themselves. 
 But I did not marvel now at my own blindness. I 
 said to myself, as of another person: " He has lost 
 consciousness. It is only the outermost parts of 
 his consciousness that are now active." But I did 
 not feel this, I only reasoned it out. 
 
 I was not tragically grieved at my expulsion 
 246 
 
RETURN 
 
 from those other planes. I was sad, but gently, 
 mildly; with a melancholy that was almost agree- 
 able to savor. There was in me no fierce longing, 
 no impatient rebellion. And I did not immoder- 
 ately regret ray lost faculties — of vision, hearing, 
 understanding, emotional elasticity, and nobility of 
 sentiment. I did not consider myself blind, deaf, 
 stupid, or ignoble. 
 
 Perhaps I was stayed by the thought: 
 
 " I shall go back. Nothing can prevent me from 
 going back sooner or later." 
 
 Yes, this thought gave me a profound sense of 
 security — it was so sure. It was a rock. The 
 wonder of the miracle of which I had been the sub- 
 ject solemnized me more and more as the minutes 
 passed. I — not another, but I! — had been des- 
 tined to this incomparably sublime adventure. Be- 
 tween the thought of my ultimate security and the 
 dizzy thought of the grandeur of the dread privi- 
 lege that had been mine, I thrilled. And, this, too, 
 was a precious and exquisite experience. 
 
 My body began slowly to assert itself. I had 
 no pain; I was not conscious of fatigue; nor, since 
 I made no effort to move, of weakness. But, with- 
 out any pang of hunger, I was aware that my body 
 needed food. After a time this bodily desire de- 
 stroyed all my other sensations, and monopolized 
 
 247 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 me. I argued: " Why trouble about food? Why 
 not sink away again? Food! . . . How ridicu- 
 lously unimportant ! " But argument was futile. I 
 wanted food, and I wanted attention, and it seemed 
 as if I had been completely forgotten by every- 
 body. There was no sound now from the bath- 
 room. Was I to be neglected forever? It was 
 astounding that Inez should leave me so. I began 
 to see that I must help myself by performing some 
 definite act. And I shaped the scheme of lifting 
 my right arm and seizing the bulb at the end of 
 the bell cord and pushing against the little ivory 
 knob on the bulb. I envisaged this enterprise as 
 something complicated and difificult, as something 
 requiring courage and energy, as something de- 
 cisive and final, only to be done under extreme 
 stress of circumstances. And just as I was pre- 
 pared to raise my hand, I heard voices. And I 
 stopped, as it were guiltily, holding all my frame 
 intensely immobile, like a thief disturbed. 
 
 The voices were approaching along the passage 
 which led from the kitchen to the vestibule. The 
 principal door of the bedroom was ajar. The 
 voices continued on the other side of that door, in 
 the vestibule; quiet, awed, and — one of them at 
 any rate — ^loquacious. This was the voice of my 
 cook, a woman whom I had not heard utter a dozen 
 
 248 
 
RETURN 
 
 words in a month, a woman of whom my impres- 
 sion was that she never spoke. 
 
 " Yes," I heard my cook say, " Marion. — that's 
 the parlor maid — she's gone to bed. Mistress sent 
 her. And really between you and me she was fit 
 for nothing, didn't know what she was doing of 
 no more than that clock — not so well. As soon as 
 ever eight o'clock struck mistress sent me for the 
 porter to take two telegrams, one to master's sis- 
 ter — so the porter told me — and another to Cap- 
 tain Hulse — that's a friend of the family. I don't 
 know why she didn't telephone to Captain Hulse. 
 They're always a-telephoning. I suppose she 
 couldn't fancy it — telling him over the telephone 
 as master was gone. It was when the porter hap- 
 pened to mention to me as you were in the Man- 
 sions, laying out those poor twins on the first floor, 
 as I first thought how handy it would be for you 
 to step in here, you being close to, like, if you un- 
 derstand me." 
 
 " Quite," said the other voice, dryly — it ap- 
 peared to be a better educated voice. " Where is 
 your mistress, Mrs. — what's the name? " 
 
 " Loring." My cook's voice dropped : " I expect 
 she's lying down a bit in the drawing-room. ... So 
 I told her you were in the Mansions. And you 
 may not believe me, but she'd never given a thought 
 
 249 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 to his being laid out, like! It hadn't crossed her 
 mind as he ought to be laid out as soon as might 
 be. . . . However, I needn't tell you that! No! 
 She gave a regular start. I told her it might be 
 too late for him to be laid out properly even now, 
 but " 
 
 "When did he die?" 
 
 I heard my cook suddenly weeping. " Two 
 o'clock, it seems. Two o'clock or hardly. And 
 the doctor ain't been since. Eh! I don't know 
 what! All at sixes and sevens. There's nothing 
 like a corpse for putting everything at sixes and 
 sevens. So mistress told me to go down to 
 the first floor, and her compliments and would 
 you step up here as soon as you'd finished down 
 there. I don't know whether I shouldn't prefer 
 you to go and get it done without disturbing her, 
 poor dear ! I always think it's best as these things 
 should be done quiet, like. Of course you know 
 best " Tears again. 
 
 " Which is the room? " asked the other voice. 
 
 " It's here," said my cook. " He makes as fine 
 a corpse as ever you see ! And you'll say so, ma'am, 
 though of course my experience is nothing to yours." 
 
 She pushed open the door. 
 
 Had it been possible, I would have spared my 
 cook the ordeal that awaited her within the doorway, 
 
 250 
 
RETURN 
 
 I felt extremely sorry for her. But I was helpless. 
 I saw her stoutish figure in the doorway and her 
 tearful, excellent face; and behind her another 
 woman, younger and thinner, in a cloak and bonnet. 
 
 " Eh ! " the cook faltered as her eye met mine. 
 She seemed to waver backward. All the color left 
 her face. 
 
 " Now, cook," I reassured her, in a tone weak but 
 persuasive. " Bring me some milk and soda, please, 
 at once." 
 
 " Nay, nay ! " she moaned, withdrawing. " Him 
 asking like that for milk and soda ! He's asking for 
 milk and soda ! . . . I suppose it's no use you wait- 
 ing now, ma'am. . . . And there's the front-door 
 bell. I do pray and beseech Almighty God it's the 
 doctor. All sixes and sevens ! " 
 
 The door was pulled to. 
 
 17 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 THE MYSTERY 
 
 THE voices of the doctor and of Mary in the 
 vestibule reassured me. By chance these 
 two must have arrived simultaneously — ^met perhaps 
 in the entrance hall of the Mansions. There was 
 now no necessity for me to take on my own shoul- 
 ders the burden of our servants' nerves. (Already 
 I was foreseeing that the cook would be running 
 off to wake Marion with the news of my existence, 
 and that the atmosphere of the flat would thus be 
 doubly charged with panic.) Nor need I harass 
 myself concerning the mystery of my wife's strange 
 seclusion in the bathroom. Both the doctor and 
 Mary were the kind of people who are never over- 
 matched by an emergency, with whom the proud 
 consciousness is always present that nothing can 
 rob them of their common sense and their wits. 
 Their influence on the situation was at once mani- 
 fest. After a few excited sentences from the cook, 
 there was a sudden hush, caused no doubt by 
 an imperative gesture from Mary. The bedroom 
 
 252 
 
THE MYSTERY 
 
 door was noiselessly latched, and I heard no more. 
 Mary and the doctor had evidently led the cook 
 away into the dining room (which was farthest 
 from the bedroom) in order to learn in detail the 
 astounding facts which the frightened woman had 
 briefly disclosed in a hysterical cascade at the front 
 door. 
 
 It was a situation which would put a strain on 
 even their self-possession. 
 
 I heard a faint stirring in the bathroom. 
 
 After a few minutes the bedroom door opened 
 gently. Again I had that feeling of awkwardness, 
 as if I had done something in respect to which my 
 attitude ought to be slightly apologetic. Mary en- 
 tered, followed by the doctor. They bore them- 
 selves well — they had arranged on their faces an 
 admirable imitation of perfect calmness— but they 
 were certainly at the limit of their powers. 
 
 " Well, Morrice," Mary greeted me quietly. " It 
 seems you took advantage of my early departure 
 last night to go and be very ill. . . . Yet he doesn't 
 look so very ill, after all, does he, doctor? " 
 
 I could have wept — because I was so touched by 
 the proud adequacy of Mary's bearing. I knew 
 Mary; I knew what she was concealing of emotion; 
 I lived in her for an agitated instant — and I say that 
 I could have wept from sympathy with her. 
 
 253 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I smiled. They were on either side of the bed, 
 glancing down at me and hesitating. 
 
 " Let's have a look at him," said the doctor 
 gruffly. 
 
 " Where's Inez ? " Mary demanded. 
 
 " In the bathroom," I whispered. 
 
 And at the same moment there was a peculiar and 
 disconcerting noise in the bathroom, and then we 
 heard a moan. 
 
 "Poor thing!" Mary exclaimed. "I'll go to 
 her." 
 
 " Now, my boy," said the doctor, when he and 
 I were alone. " Keep still. Just let me examine 
 that precious heart of yours, will you ? " 
 
 While his head was ^ent to my breast, I said : 
 
 " She thought I was dead, you know." 
 
 " H'm ! " he said, lifting his head, and taking my 
 pulse. " So it seems. It's a mistake people make 
 sometimes. I should have come long ago, but I 
 was kept by a midwifery case — seven blessed hours 
 if you please. . . . Well," he gazed at me quizzic- 
 ally. " You are a long way off dead. But let me 
 tell you," he added grimly, as though calling back 
 a little lad who was running too joyously off after 
 being acquitted of some serious charge, " let me tell 
 »you you've had a darned near shave, my friend! " 
 
 A darned near shave! For him, my adventure 
 254 
 
THE MYSTERY 
 
 was to be summed up as a darned near shave. All 
 those wonders, miracles, ecstasies, revealings, terrors 
 — unique and unutterable — were a darned near 
 shave. I had seen the infinite, I had travelled 
 through millions of years and come back through 
 millions of years, I had had knowledge of myself, 
 I was made sacred to myself and set apart, every 
 human being was made sacred to me and set apart 
 — and it was a darned near shave! But how could 
 he guess? How could he surmise, he, preoccupied 
 always by the heavy labors of his profession? I 
 felt sure that, could I only begin a narration to him 
 , of my darned near shave, in the right key, could I 
 only induce in him the right receptive mood, nobody 
 among my friends would be more imaginatively im- 
 pressed than he, and nobody more sympathetically 
 curious and inquiring. But I should never be able 
 to begin the narration. I should never be able to 
 speak about it. The risks of a misunderstanding, 
 of a failure to communicate, would be too great. I 
 would not court the wound that incredulity might 
 inflict. I could not have borne to see hiding behind 
 the doctor's controlled face his ironic reflections upon 
 the deluding power of delirium and dream. And 
 just as no one could be more sympathetic, no one 
 was more capable than the doctor of a blasting sa- 
 tiric silence when his terrible common sense hap- 
 
 255 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 pened to be affronted. No! I should have to accept 
 the definition of a darned near shave. I did accept 
 it; there and then I reconciled myself to it. . . . 
 The fault was not the doctor's; but the deprivation 
 was his, and I was sorry for him. 
 
 " I think I'd better have something to eat," I 
 said. 
 
 " Oh, you do, do you ? " said he. 
 
 He could not hide his joy in the interestingness of 
 my case. His pleasure pleased me. It was a pure 
 scientific pleasure, untinged by desire. I thought 
 how fine and how naive he was. 
 
 " When did you — come to yourself ? " he asked. 
 
 "About — I don't know — a few minutes since, I 
 suppose." 
 
 " Well, we'll see about getting something into 
 you." He cleared his throat as if preparing to call 
 for someone,' and glanced at the door, at the bell 
 cord, and at the bathroom door. His spectacles 
 gleamed momentarily white. 
 
 The bathroom door, which Mary in her immense 
 discretion had closed, was opened again, and Mary 
 appeared. 
 
 " Oh ! I say, Mrs. ," said the doctor, unable 
 
 to recall my sister's name. " This individual is as 
 right as a trivet." 
 
 Mary did not smile. 
 
 256 
 
THE MYSTERY 
 
 " Can you come here a minute, doctor ? " she asked 
 gravely. 
 
 " Yes," said he. 
 
 They both vanished into the bathroom. Once 
 more I was neglected, ignored. Inez must be ill. 
 The night and the morning, and that body of mine, 
 and my resurrection, must have been too much for 
 Inez. It seemed to me shocking that events should 
 compel a woman of Inez's temperament to go 
 through the spiritual convulsions and perturbations 
 to which she must have been subjected. The idea 
 horrified me, as the mental picture of- a conscious 
 dog vivisected will horrify. I could feel all that 
 Inez must have suffered. I thought that a long fu- 
 ture of continuous happiness could scarcely compen- 
 sate her for her sufferings. I wished ardently to 
 arrange somehow a due recompense for her. 
 
 Mary appeared. 
 
 " We're just going to bring Inez in here," said 
 she, in a tone carefully casual. " She isn't well." 
 
 I expected that they would lead Inez in. But Inez 
 was carried in, stretched out horizontally, the doctor 
 at her shoulders and Mary at her feet. They laid 
 her on her bed. 
 
 " But " I began. 
 
 "Don't worry yourself," the doctor interrupted 
 me. <'You can't do anything. She's unwell." 
 
 257 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Then to Mary : " Chalk's what I want. And lime- 
 water. And then hot flannels and so on. Chalk 
 fir^t." 
 
 " Yes," said Mary, and went out silently. 
 
 The doctor also rushed out of the room into my 
 study, and returned with a large threefold screen, 
 with which he shut off my bed from the other one. 
 Behind the screen I could now hear his movements, 
 and the moans of Inez. Articles of her clothing 
 were flung out beyond the shelter of the screen. 
 Excitement and movement increased. People came 
 in and out of the bedroom. The screen hid the prin- 
 cipal door, but I could hear Mary, and I could hear 
 the cook, and then I could hear Marion. The doc- 
 tor gave orders to everybody, and Mary gave 
 orders to the servants — polite, but coldly incisive 
 and peremptory. And I could hear the pouring 
 out of liquids, and creakings of the bed, and cries 
 from Inez, and Mary's soothing reassurances to 
 her. 
 
 "What's that?" I heard Mary demand. 
 
 " It's milk and soda for master, Mrs. Dean," the 
 cook's voice replied proudly. " He asked for it. 
 Shall I give it him? " 
 
 " Yes. Give him anything he wants," said the 
 doctor curtly. 
 
 The cook made her appearance in front of the 
 258 
 
THE MYSTERY 
 
 screen, benevolently triumphant with the milk and 
 soda. In the midst of all the commotion caused 
 by her mistress, she had remembered my request, 
 and she was proud of having remembered my re- 
 quest. When I had drunk the milk and soda: 
 
 " There! "she murmured, satisfied, and ventured 
 to arrange my pillow. She had recovered from her 
 fright, and was now burning to atone for it. She 
 was ready to melt in her solicitude. I smiled and 
 was rewarded, and it seemed to me pathetic that 
 such a trifle as a smile from me should produce in 
 her such delight. She dared not remain longer by 
 my side, and so reluctantly departed, the empty glass 
 rattling on the plate. I wished that I could better 
 have made her comprehend the degree of my ap- 
 preciation. 
 
 Mary appeared. She had taken off her hat, and 
 was wearing a servant's white apron, and a pair of 
 slippers. She raised her hand to enjoin silence in 
 respect to events on the other side of the screen. 
 I nodded. "You all right?" she whispered. I 
 nodded again. There was almost silence now on 
 the other side of the screen. The doctor appeared. 
 
 " Look here," he said, very quietly. " I think 
 if this young man could be removed to the sofa in 
 the drawing-room. . . . Can you fix him up a 
 sheet and pillows on the sofa? We shall be able to 
 
 259 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 look after him better there. Not that he wants 
 much looking after now." 
 
 " Yes," said Mary. " I think that's a very good 
 idea." 
 
 My transference to the sofa in the drawing-room 
 was executed with the maximum of celerity and 
 comfort under the direction of these two. I discov- 
 ered that I could walk with their aid. And as I 
 passed slowly through the study, I felt like one who 
 passes through a country unvisited since childhood. 
 So I lay in the drawing-room, and was abandoned 
 again. The cook brought me more food. 
 
 " Will you tell Mrs. Dean I want to speak to her, 
 if she can spare half a minute ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," the cook agreed heartily. 
 
 During the brief time that the doctor and Mary 
 had remained with me in the drawing-room, super- 
 intending my installation, I had waited for one or 
 the other of them to enlighten me as to Inez. I 
 knew that Inez was suffering from more than a 
 mere indisposition consequent upon nervous shock 
 and strain. But neither of them said a word. We 
 were alone together in the drawing-room, where 
 Inez could not overhear, and yet neither of them 
 had said a word. And somehow I had not been able 
 to bring myself to ask. Strange! Strange on their 
 part and on mine ! 
 
 260 
 
THE MYSTERY 
 
 Now the mystery grew, and seemed to pervade 
 the whole flat. I could not support it. 
 
 Mary entered, quickly, quietly, with questioning 
 face. 
 
 " I say, Mary," I asked her as cheerfully as I 
 could. "Is anything really the matter there?" 
 
 "Where?" She stiffened. 
 
 "Inez?" 
 
 " She's certainly ill," 
 
 "What's up?" 
 
 Her features became severe, refusing. She could 
 not help it. It was in her character to decline to 
 yield to the whims of a patient who ought to have 
 no will of his own. It was in her character, in a 
 time of difficulty or crisis, to act in the best interests 
 of those weaker than herself gently but ruthlessly 
 regardless of their unreasonable wishes. The in- 
 stinct in her was deep. She — or she and the doctor 
 in council — had decided that it would be better for 
 me not to occupy myself with Inez's condition — 
 had they not removed me from the bedroom? — ■ 
 hence I was on no account to occupy myself with 
 it. I was to be content with such information as 
 was considered proper for me. There was no dan- 
 ger for me, and I was to be treated strictly accord- 
 ing to reason. I could read all that on her face. 
 And yet she wanted to tell me ; she brimmed with 
 
 261 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the mysterious fact withheld. Only the stern in- 
 stinct prevented her from brimming over. 
 
 " I — perhaps the doctor will be popping in here 
 soon," she said, and moved away. " You all 
 right ? " she added at the door, smiling seriously. 
 
 " Yes, thanks," I said. I knew how she felt, and 
 how the instinct of harshness, under the guise of 
 reason, influenced her conduct. I was often con- 
 scious of the same instinct in myself. 
 
 The doctor did presently come in. 
 
 " The truth is," he said, sitting down on a chair 
 near the sofa, " your wife's been drinking oxalic 
 acid. I should say she must have drunk about three 
 penn'orth of that stuff. I found the bottle in the 
 bathroom. From what I can learn she must have 
 drunk it about half-past ten or so this morning." 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 " It's just as well you should know," he added. 
 
 " You see, it's so handy, oxalic acid is," he ex- 
 plained. " Every woman keeps it for cleaning straw 
 hats, or taking stains out of linen. It's so infer- 
 nally handy." 
 
 " But do you mean to say it's fatal ? " I asked. 
 
 " Not always," he replied. " I may pull her 
 through." 
 
 The tone was not convincing, nor apparently was 
 it meant to be convincing. His eye, when it caught 
 
 262 
 
THE MYSTERY 
 
 mine, seemed to be saying : " Whatever the vagaries 
 of human nature, the true philosopher is never sur- 
 prised by them. And one vagary is not more 
 strange than another." 
 
 He had been up all night. He had probably had 
 no sleep for about thirty hours. He had assisted 
 almost continuously, during that time, at scenes of 
 danger and emotion, and yet he was master of him- 
 self and of his body. He did not even yawn. He 
 might have just strolled gently down Bayswater 
 Road to see me about a trifling complaint, after a 
 long night's rest and a leisurely breakfast. Despite 
 the frankness which he used to those whom he 
 treated as his equals in practical philosophy, there 
 was always a mystery behind the glint of that man's 
 spectacles. Such was his grim power that for a 
 few moments I did not truly realize that Inez had 
 been trying to commit suicide. I knew the fact, but 
 I did not realize it. The realization came gradually. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE BEDSIDE 
 
 MORRICE!" ' 
 
 Mary came into the drawing-room with a 
 new burden in her voice. It was late in the after- 
 noon. The doctor had gone. A nurse had been sent 
 for, but had not yet arrived. Mary had reorganized 
 the Hfe of the flat on a fresh basis, with Inez on her 
 bed as its principal center, and me on the sheeted 
 sofa as a subsidiary center. And already, under 
 Mary's wand, under her perfect confidence that she 
 was equal to the situation, the life of the flat was 
 running smoothly and regularly. No noise! No 
 confusion! No hysteria of servants! Hysteria 
 could not exist near Mary. She had dofifed the 
 apron — sign that order reigned. And yet now there 
 was apprehension in her voice. She looked at me in 
 silence, examining me, apparently undecided. 
 
 "How is she?" I asked. 
 
 " She wants to see you," said Mary. " I don't 
 know what the doctor would say. I really don't. 
 Do you think you could, get as far as the bedroom 
 
 264 
 
THE BEDSIDE 
 
 without doing yourself any harm? You're very 
 weak." 
 
 " Oh, yes," I said. " I must come. I feel quite 
 all right. I must come." 
 
 " She wanted to come to you. In fact, I had my 
 work cut out to stop her. But you're certainly better 
 able to go to her than she is to come to you, and 
 as she wants to see you " 
 
 " Considering that I walked in here " 
 
 " No, you didn't." Mary corrected my pride 
 somewhat curtly. " You were practically carried in 
 here. Perhaps, if I help you, and one of the ser- 
 vants " 
 
 " I don't want the servants." ■ 
 
 " No," she agreed. " But " 
 
 She would carefully weigh every project. She 
 would leave nothing to impulse when risks had to be 
 faced. 
 
 " You can't stop with her long, you know — it 
 wouldn't do for either of you," she said, as we passed 
 through the study. 
 
 The bedroom was arranged with minute neatness. 
 The first thing I noticed was that my bed had been 
 made, and the counterpane disposed in an unfamiliar 
 way. , Mary must have made the bed herself. There 
 was a faint odor of eau de cologne. At the side 
 of the other bed was a table which had been carried 
 
 265 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 in out of the vestibule ; it had a white cloth and was 
 covered with bottles, glasses, and some larger ves- 
 sels. Between the two beds a chair had been placed 
 for me. It appeared to me that I was afraid to look 
 at Inez. I distinguished her form on the bed while 
 my eye avoided her. I dropped into the chair. 
 Yes, I was weak. I could feel the tears rising, and 
 I sought to drive them back. 
 
 " Be sure to keep your dressing gown well over 
 your knees," Mary whispered. And then she left us, 
 with silent tread. 
 
 Why should my eye have been timid to look at 
 Inez ? I do not know. Throughout the afternoon I 
 had been thinking : " How she must have suffered — 
 to make her take the poison ! " And now that I was 
 by her side, the conception of what she had suffered 
 lacerated me almost intolerably. Of course it was 
 remorse that had driven Inez to suicide. I could 
 picture to myself her violent remorse, her remorse 
 holy in its intensity. I knew how she must in her 
 own mind have torn to pieces the arguments with 
 which she had defended herself to me, accusing her- 
 self of my death, and judging her conduct in the 
 light of its accidental consequence, despising logic 
 in a paroxysm of contrition. I could picture to my- 
 self her existence through the night and the dawn. 
 I knew that she had changed her dress, and that she 
 
 266 
 
THE BEDSIDE 
 
 had dispatched telegrams. She had probably kept 
 an appearance of calm, probably convinced herself 
 that she was calm. And then suddenly, with no 
 warning, she had yielded, and her remorse had be- 
 come a frenzy. And in an instant she had thought 
 of the oxalic acid. Was it just before she drank it 
 that she had prayed for my everlasting welfare ? It 
 must have been in some such supreme moment that 
 she had prayed. 
 
 When I looked at her the conception of what she 
 must have suffered overpowered me. ... It was 
 her presence. ... I was startled, shocked, to find 
 that I could not control myself. Tears ran down 
 my face, as I had seen tears running down the face 
 of children. A little more, and I should have sobbed. 
 
 Her hair was loose over the pillow. Always there 
 was something strange to me about Inez, and es- 
 pecially about her hair, when she lay in bed. . . . 
 I don't know. ... A disclosure of the original 
 woman. ... I suppose it was the revelation of the 
 true forms and attitudes of her body, and the revela- 
 tion also of the depth of her physical life. Inez lived 
 in her body. ... Do you understand me? . . . 
 She thrilled in her body as some people thrill in their 
 souls. It was splendid. It was rare and distin- 
 guished. And her loose hair on the pillow, or per- 
 haps the abandonment of an arm, was the symbol of 
 18 267 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 all this. I could feel it now. Her face was bloated, 
 the lips redder and more raw than ever; it was 
 drawn into a permanent and profound apprehen- 
 siveness; her breath came difficult and irregular; a 
 hiccough shook her. Nevertheless, I could feel now 
 all the fineness of what her physical life had been ; 
 it had all receded to her wide-spread hair, and was 
 therein visible. . . . But the change, the havoc! 
 Last night I had been the victim, the ravaged rem- 
 nant of man, and she the perfectly functioning or- 
 ganism. Now, my blood was flowing strongly, and 
 she was the victim. While I was in the drawing- 
 room I had speculated, with remarkable detachment, 
 upon the wondrous and dire adventures that were 
 awaiting her if she should die. And I did not much 
 grieve, because I watched her through them to the 
 climax. Indeed, I envied her, in that she might pre- 
 cede me thither. That was in the drawing-room. 
 But as I sat by her bed, and timorously looked at her 
 corrupted and broken, I could have cried out to her, 
 that if she would only recover and forget, I would 
 never ask of destiny another favor. So terribly was 
 my sense of justice outraged by her martyrdom ! I 
 wanted to pour my strength into her, and by the 
 magic of an intense volition restore that skin to its 
 pure brilliance, and the contours of that face to their 
 soft carelessness. 
 
 268 
 
THE BEDSIDE 
 
 What could I say to her ? I could say nothing ex- 
 cept her name. 
 
 She raised her head anxiously, and looked in turn 
 at the three doors of the bedroom, to see that they 
 were all closed. 
 
 " It wasn't all true," she said, in a whisper, when 
 she had satisfied herself about the doors, " what I 
 told you last night." 
 
 " Don't- worry about that now," I said, trying to 
 make of my voice a reassuring caress. But my voice 
 was broken, and I averted my face to hide my tears. 
 
 " But I must/' she went on whispering. " It's 
 very important. It's very important for everybody 
 that you should know. I was only playing 
 with Johnnie, and he was only playing with me. 
 . . . My fault. I drew him on. Yes, I drew him 
 on. When I say ' only playing ' I mean it wasn't 
 serious. It wasn't honest. I might have been his 
 mistress to-day, but I didn't really care for him, 
 nor him for me. I pretended to myself I did; but 
 I didn't. . . . Just wickedness, wickedness! " 
 
 The sentences were interrupted by the hiccough, 
 and by her difficult breathing. She looked at me 
 fixedly, with a set, anxious face. One hand was 
 hanging limply over the edge of the bed." I could 
 divine that she wished to humiliate herself utterly; 
 her nature compelled her to be spectacular. And 
 
 269 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 my wish was to put an end to her self-humiliation. 
 Then I thought : " But if this display satisfies her 
 instinct, what right haVe I to try to stop it? She 
 is perfectly sincere. She has her way of self- 
 expression, and I have mine." 
 
 " I hope you aren't going to worry about all 
 that," I answered. " What you said about me last 
 night was true enough, anyhow. It's all just as 
 much my fault as anybody's. Let's both forget it." 
 
 If I, too, could have humiliated myself deeply, if 
 we could have mingled in passionate abasement, 
 each snatching remorsefully at the whole of the 
 blame, she would have been more content. But 
 this was beyond me. 
 
 " It's very important in this way," she went on. 
 " He really is in love with Mary, though he doesn't 
 quite know it. He really is. And of course she is 
 with him. I was only interfering. . . . Jealous. I 
 stopped playing the piano last night because she 
 was too close to me, I could feel . . ." 
 
 " Yes, yes," I interrupted her. I could not help 
 myself. 
 
 " But you understand why I'm telling you all 
 this?" she insisted. 
 
 " Yes," I said, more gently. But I did not care. 
 I was too tortured by sympathy for her to be in- 
 terested in information about other people. " Can 
 
 270 
 
THE BEDSIDE 
 
 I get you anything? " The maintenance of life 
 seemed to be so difficult to her that one's first 
 thought was to press aid upon her. 
 
 " Now I want you to promise me something, 
 Morrice," she said, never raising her voice above a 
 whisper. 
 
 I made no response. 
 
 " Father Crowder is coming. He will give me 
 extreme unction. And I want you to be here, 
 Morrice." 
 
 I had a strong antipathy to priests of all kinds, 
 though I disliked Roman Catholic priests a little 
 less than others. No priest had ever entered my 
 home. It had not occurred to me that Inez, sup- 
 posing her to be desperately ill, would have need 
 of her Church. She seldom spoke to me of her 
 religious practices. I never knew when she went 
 to confession. Save for her punctiliousness con- 
 cerning the observation of Friday and of Lent, I 
 might almost have forgotten that she was a pro- 
 fessed Roman Catholic. I was now being re- 
 minded! The idea of assisting at a religious cere- 
 mony in my own home revolted me. I should have 
 to kneel! . . . Could I not excuse myself on the 
 plea of my illness? Surely I was weak enough! 
 
 " Certainly, if you wish it," I said. Why should 
 I not gratify her by the sacrifice of some of my 
 
 271 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 intellectual pride? To kneel — was it so grave to 
 kneel? 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " But you'll be all right again in a week," I said. 
 " The doctor said he should pull you through. And 
 he will." At the moment of saying this I truly 
 meant it. I could not think that Inez would die. 
 
 " Touch my hand," she said. 
 
 It was ice cold. I put it under the bedclothes. 
 I can still remember the feel of the fine lace at her 
 wrist. 
 
 " Have they told you what I did? " she de- 
 manded suddenly, in a dififerent tone, having 
 changed her posture. 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " I thought you were dead," she said. " I 
 thought I'd killed you." 
 
 "Inez!" 
 
 " You must kiss me," she whispered. " Don't 
 hurt me — my lips." 
 
 She slightly raised her face. There was an ap- 
 peal in it, plaintive, simple — I don't know! I 
 sobbed. ... I thought I could write down every- 
 thing, but I can't. . . . 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 THE CEREMONY 
 
 IT seemed to me impossible that she was near 
 death. I could not imagine her dead. And 
 yet that night, in the bedroom, and in the flat gen- 
 erally, an atmosphere presaging immediate death 
 was created. The weather was close, and doors 
 and windows were left open. We expected the 
 priest. We listened for the arrival of the priest. 
 I lay in my study; Mary had caused a bed to be 
 arranged for me there. Save the resulting lassi- 
 tude, I felt nothing of the violent attack which had 
 overthrown me on the previous evening; and the 
 doctor had said that I had only to regain my 
 strength. I lay on a folding bed, and watched the 
 window as. I had watched it twenty hours earlier. 
 I could not yet envisage clearly and proportion- 
 ately either my adventure or my return therefrom 
 to the dailiness of existence in the flat. I mused 
 on it vaguely and intermittently. My reflections 
 had no distinct form and no particular tendency. 
 Wonder: that was my state. One of my faculties 
 
 273 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 was absorbed in listening for the advent of the 
 priest. Then I heard the front door open and shut, 
 and I heard a man's rich voice. Was that the 
 voice of the priest? Was the priest in the fiat? 
 And after another minute the door between the 
 study and the bedroom was mysteriously closed. 
 And then Mary came into the study from the 
 drawing-room, and said: 
 
 " He has come." 
 
 " The priest? " 
 
 "Yes. He is with her." 
 
 The priest was in the flat. We looked at each 
 other, Mary and I. I knew what was in her mind, 
 for the same thing was in my mind. Never should 
 we be able to eradicate from our mentality the 
 attitude toward the Roman Church — ^half hostile 
 and half awed — ^which a Protestant mother had un- 
 wittingly formed in us. For over twenty years 
 we had been completely emancipated from the ex- 
 ternal imposition upon us of any dogmatic ideas 
 concerning religion; the Protestant mother had 
 died when Mary was twelve. We had an equal in- 
 tellectual disdain of all dogma. And yet a Roman 
 Catholic priest, and the rites over which he pre- 
 sided, escaped somehow from our disdain. We 
 despised our mother's clergymen. But her horror 
 of the astuteness of priests had had a result in us 
 
 274 
 
THE CEREMONY 
 
 which she did not foresee. There was something 
 grandiosely unnatural about a priest, something 
 uniquely impressive. Even my revealing adven- 
 ture could not make me class a priest with other 
 servants of different gods. I remembered the 
 solace of Inez's prayer for the peace of my soul. 
 There at any rate the Church of Rome had tri- 
 umphed in Inez. When Mary said that the priest 
 had come, it seemed to me, and it seemed to her, 
 as if the Pope had come into my home, as if the 
 whole Catholic Church, its traditions, splendors, 
 cruelties, and sublime tenacities had come into my 
 home; as if the Middle Ages had entered in scar- 
 let. The nostrils of my imagination smelled in- 
 cense. 
 
 Inez was being confessed, in her half-deUrious 
 weakness. The priest was hearing matters that I 
 could never hear, judging with an authority that I 
 could never exert, consoHng with a balm that I 
 could never offer; I, her husband; I, who knew 
 more than any priest had ever known. I could 
 tell Inez nothing of what I knew; the idea of 
 attempting to tell her had not even occurred to 
 me. 
 
 Mary left me, nervously. I had not informed her 
 of Inez's request. Strange difhdence between 
 brother and sister! I had been sitting up in bed. 
 
 275 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Without too much difficulty I left the bed, 
 and sat in my easy-chair, wrapped from head to 
 foot in a dressing gown. There I waited, uneasy, 
 not knowing exactly what would happen nor what 
 would be the sequence of events. What did hap- 
 pen was precisely the thing that I had not antici- 
 pated. The little door giving direct access to the 
 bedroom opened, and the vestmented priest him- 
 self appeared and summoned me. There was no 
 greeting between us. He glanced at me, seemed 
 startled at my attire, hesitated, and then beck- 
 oned, without a word. His gesture was digni- 
 fied. I obeyed. Evidently he was unaware that I 
 was supposed not to be able to walk without 
 assistance. I followed him, and softly closed the 
 door. 
 
 I was surprised to see Marion in the bedroom. 
 She was busy at the dressing table. All its usual 
 array had been removed from the dressing table, 
 and a white napkin spread. On the napkin was a 
 silver vessel, of no household shape, and a crucifix. 
 My Regency candlesticks, and two others, had been 
 taken from their customary place, and garnished 
 with candles, which now burned flickering at either 
 edge of the dressing table. There was no other 
 illumination. Her spectacles prevented me from 
 seeing Marion's eyes, yet I knew at once, from 
 
 276 
 
THE CEREMONY 
 
 something intense and passionate in her posture, 
 that she was of my wife's religion. And I had 
 not known. It must have been she who had arr 
 ranged the candlesticks. She was in apron and 
 cap and starched wristbands, but she had ceased 
 to be a menial and had become a devotee. 
 Whether or not she had asked permission to re- 
 main in the room, I felt that she was determined to 
 remain; I felt that she had promised herself this 
 ecstasy and would not be denied. Upon seeing me, 
 through the glass of the dressing table, she hurried 
 toward me, and led me to the large chair near the 
 bed. None spoke. Inez moaned slightly, moving 
 amidst her hair on the bed, and gazing at the priest, 
 rapt. She was still troubled by the hiccough. The 
 bedclothes had been disposed in a particular way. 
 By the dressing table stood Marion, stiff and expect- 
 ant, as I always found her standing in the dining 
 room when we went in to dinner. I looked for her 
 radiant form; I looked for the visible emission of 
 her ecstasy in a flight of thoughts, but I saw only 
 Marion in black and white. She knew not that I 
 knew far more of her than she knew herself, and 
 that her most secret emotions had not been hidden 
 from me. She knew not that she had been a mira- 
 cle to me. 
 
 The priest, having been to the dressing table, 
 277 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 approached the bed, and half knelt. And at the 
 same moment Marion knelt, with the practiced fa- 
 cility of one accustomed to genuflexions. And the 
 robe of the priest and his profile stood out between 
 the light of the candles and the whiteness of the 
 sheet, and his shadow fell across the disfigured 
 face of Inez, which she turned toward him. She 
 shut her eyes, and with his thumb he anointed 
 them in a crosswise motion, saying in a low, sad 
 voice: 
 
 " Through this holy unction, and His most ten- 
 der mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatsoever 
 sins thou hast committed by seeing. . . . Amen! " 
 
 He was a stoutish man of about fifty, with an 
 aristocratic but intelligent face, and fine nostrils; 
 his hand was ringed, and it moved with graceful- 
 ness — a self-conscious hand. It was difficult not 
 to believe that he was as convinced as the women 
 were of the efficacy of his acts and words. 
 
 Then he crossed Inez's ears with that shapely 
 thumb, and murmured: 
 
 " Through this holy unction, and His most ten^ 
 der mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatso- 
 ever sins thou hast committed by hearing. . . . 
 Amen!" 
 
 And thus with her nose and her mouth; till he 
 came to her hands, and then to her feet. That the 
 
 278 
 
THE CEREMONY 
 
 symbolism of forgiveness should be extended to the 
 feet surprised and impressed me. I remember the 
 pale, exposed feet of Inez, like the feet of a mar- 
 tyr. . . . 
 
 Then the priest took the cross, as one might take 
 a fragile jewel, and offered it to the pardoned lips 
 of Inez, who kissed it with a rapturous fervor, and 
 sighed content. In her life this moment was the 
 culmination of the spectacular. I could feel in my 
 heart the supremacy of its effect on her. 
 
 Later, Marion rose from her knees. The priest, 
 reserved and taciturn, but with an unexceptionable 
 dignified correctness, made his preparations for de- 
 parture, and departed. Marion turned on the elec- 
 tric light, and, extinguishing the candles, put them 
 away; then she rearranged the bed, and restored 
 the customary array to the dressing table; lastly, ' 
 she folded up the white napkin. After a short in- 
 terval, Mary and the newly arrived nurse came into 
 the bedroom. Mary hovered round the bed, sym- 
 pathizing with Inez's sufferings, and murmuring 
 remarks to the prim nurse. She made no allusion 
 to the ceremony which had just concluded, nor 
 was it ever mentioned between us. 
 
 " Now, Morrice ! " she said to me warningly. 
 
 With her help I retired. Inez was still being 
 shaken by the hiccough. 
 
 279 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 The doctor had considered that during the day 
 her case had become desperate. He did not ex- 
 pect her to pass the night. It was not, however, 
 till the fifth day that, after a prolonged period of 
 weakness resembling coma, she expired. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 DISTURBANCE 
 
 SHE expired in the forenoon. It was Wednes- 
 day. I sat afterwards in the study, dressed, 
 near my temporary bed. I had been enfeebled on 
 the Sunday, the day following the visit of the priest, 
 but thence onward I had made rapid progress, be- 
 ing constitutionally a man of very short convales- 
 cences. As I sat in the study, alone, I did not 
 think of her as dead. I had requested Mary to 
 have the deserted body completely covered with a 
 sheet as soon as the nurse had made it ready for 
 the shroud. I wished that Inez should not be dis- 
 tressed by the obscene sight of that which she had 
 left, nor by the spectacle of her friends wasting 
 upon it their lamentations. I also requested that 
 silence and repose should be maintained in the flat. 
 I chose the study for my solitude because the 
 study had been the scene of my first experiences 
 during the night of my adventure. It was in the 
 study that the gross world had dissolved for me. 
 As I sat in my armchair I could gaze at a certain 
 
 281 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 red vase, remembering the moment when that vase, 
 sole relic of the gross world, had jutted up alone 
 in a sea of multicolored radiance. As I sat in my 
 armchair I was in the exact spot where the radiant 
 form of Marion had reclined while emitting the 
 chromatic shapes of thought, the spot which it 
 had quitted on an\ amorous errand while Marion 
 dreamed, the spot to which it had been recalled 
 so brusquely by the jar of the open window 
 in the night breeze. The study was, as it were, 
 sacred to me, set apart from the other rooms 
 of the flat. It was in the study that I had gone 
 through the experience of being cast out from 
 humanity. 
 
 Inez might be there. Assuredly she was some- 
 where near. When they came to tell me that she 
 had passed away I went for a moment to her body, 
 and after being satisfied that she had indeed passed 
 away, I glanced about and behind me, as though I 
 might discover her watching us. But I had not re- 
 mained. In the study, gazing at the vase, or at 
 the window where I had been captive, I was not 
 afraid. I had nothing whatever of the common fear 
 of the disembodied. But I was full of curiosity, 
 anxiety, and solicitude. And I was self-conscious. 
 She might be — she probably was — looking at me 
 from some corner, appealing to me in vain for as- 
 
 282 
 
DISTURBANCE 
 
 sistance and sympathy. She was criticising and 
 judging me. She was being astounded at my blind- 
 ness in not perceiving her. She was thrilled with 
 a supreme alarm. 
 
 I was not aware of any personal grief. I did not 
 think of her as dead. How should I think of her as 
 dead when I could almost feel her glance upon me? 
 But I was grieved for her. The acuteness of my 
 sympathy was painful to me. I wished fervently to 
 be able to reassure her amid the awful disurbance 
 of her new sensations. Never in the gross world 
 had she stood in such need of sympathy. I strained 
 my eyes to see her. I thought that perhaps by vir- 
 tue of intensity of voHtion I might, having regard 
 to my knowledge, glimpse her, were it faintly, were 
 it for an instant. But no! Then I recalled the 
 mysterious gaseous counterpart which I had seen 
 floating above my own bed on the night of my 
 adventure. I did not want to return to the bed- 
 room, but I did return to the bedroom, tiptoeing in 
 my slippers. I approached her bed and explored 
 the spaces above it for a trace of a pale form. But 
 I could detect nothing. We in the gross envelope 
 were cut ofiE from such apparitions. 
 
 Like a thief fleeing I went back to the study and 
 sat down again in the armchair. Not a sound in 
 the flat! There was no sun on this window, which 
 19 283 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 faced the west, but I could see the sunshine playing 
 on the restless elm trees. She had died in the day- 
 time. Would that affect her? She had brought 
 about her own departure by a willful act. Would 
 that affect her? I had fancied that I knew every- 
 thing about the state in which she was. But how 
 little I knew! Now, surely, the radiant world was 
 breaking in for her upon the gross. Now, surely, 
 the solid was melting for her, and two universes 
 were merged in dire confusion. And if she was 
 looking at me, what she saw was not a man of flesh 
 and blood, clothed, wearing slippers, but a radiant 
 form pulsating in a sea of radiance. I had so seen 
 Marion, and so Inez would see me. Marion, ob- 
 sessed by a secret passion, had not concerned her- 
 self with me. Though I had but just departed, 
 though the flat was full of the stir of my departure, 
 in her heart she had been busy with nothing but 
 her love. The shapes of her thought had not once 
 been directed upon me as she sat waking or dream- 
 ing in the armchair. She had done naught for my 
 solitude. 
 
 I set myself to think of Inez, to think of her in 
 steady sympathy. I emphasized my ardent wishes 
 for her safe passage across the difificult frontiers of 
 this gross world. I pictured strongly her radiance, 
 and my own, whipping my imagination to its full 
 
 284 
 
DISTURBANCE 
 
 power, and strove to shed upon her a constant 
 stream of shapes that should convince her of my 
 understanding sympathy, and cheer her forward. 
 I came nigh to seeing her and the procession of my 
 thoughts from me to her. The whole force of my 
 being was concentrated in this effort to be of serv- 
 ice to her. 
 
 The distant sound of the telephone bell cut 
 through my mood like a shaft. I fought against it, 
 withdrawing more and more within myself so as 
 to think powerfully. But after a time the door of 
 the study opened from the drawing-room and Mary 
 entered, and shattered my mood to pieces. She 
 had scarcely left us for five days. She was calm but 
 tearful. 
 
 " Morrice," she said, " I've just telephoned to 
 the doctor. He says he'll come along at once. I 
 asked him about the inquest, and he says that he'll 
 do what's necessary." 
 
 The inquest! I was forgetting that Inez had 
 committed suicide. It was so long since the act 
 itself that her death seemed to be the result of a 
 natural illness. An inquest — on the body ! The 
 body ! I was being dragged back to that offensive 
 and utterly unimportant remnant. I saw the in- 
 quest and the funeral as an endless vista of desola- 
 tion cutting me off from Inez herself. 
 
 285 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " There are several things to be done," said 
 Mary. 
 
 " What? " 
 
 " Well," she said. " Several. Letters to be 
 written, and — But if you'll leave everything to 
 me, til be responsible. You're certainly not fit to 
 put yourself about." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I am." 
 
 " Well," she replied caustically, " we shall see 
 what the doctor says about that." 
 
 " What about Harold? " I asked. 
 
 Harold was Inez's sole surviving brother, almost 
 her one relative. Mary had written to him on the 
 Saturday, but he had left his home on Monday 
 morning before the first postal delivery, and noth- 
 ing had been heard from him. He was a commer- 
 cial traveler, and apparently the letter had been 
 following him on a journey in the north. 
 
 " I really don't know what to do," said Mary, 
 " unless I take a cab and go down to his place of 
 business and find out something definite. It's very 
 annoying." 
 
 " No news of Johnnie yet, I suppose? " 
 
 She flushed slightly, as' always at the mention of 
 Hulse's name. She had telephoned to him several 
 times during the illness, but he had strangely gone 
 to Paris and left no address. Hulse was heavily on 
 
 286 
 
DISTURBANCE 
 
 my mind. One day Hulse and I would have to 
 meet. 
 
 " No! Nothing! I can telephone again to ask 
 if he's returned, if you like." 
 
 " Oh! " I said. " Do exactly as you think best." 
 
 "Then I'm to see to everything? ... I can al- 
 ways ask you if I want to know anything." 
 
 I nodded. I ought to have felt very grateful to 
 her. To help me she was entirely neglecting her 
 child, who was far more important to her than a 
 brother. But I did not feel grateful. I did not feel 
 anything except that I must be alone and in tran- 
 quilHty to think of Inez. 
 
 Mary closed the door. Invaluable woman! 
 Priceless in an emergency! Absolutely reliable, ab- 
 solutely capable! And genuinely sympathetic in 
 her calm, dry way. . . . Tears in her eyes for Inez 
 and for me! But where did she suppose Inez was? 
 
 I tried eagerly to repair the breach of the inter- 
 ruption. But in a few moments the door opened 
 again and Mary reappeared, shut the door, and ad- 
 vanced into the room. 
 
 " He's come — ^her brother! " she said in a low 
 voice. " Of course you'll have to see him." 
 
 She spoke thus of him as a stranger, because he 
 was effectively a stranger to us. Mary herself, in- 
 deed, had never before set eyes on him. He was a 
 
 287 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 man of about forty-five, a widower, with'no interest 
 in any art, and nothing whatever in common with 
 either Inez or myself. I doubt if Inez and he had 
 met on the average oftener than once a year since 
 our marriage. I had seen him altogether perhaps 
 half a dozen times. He had made no impression 
 upon me at all. A silent being — silent because 
 without ideas, without personality. A man seem- 
 ingly bereft of ambition, and whose sole desire was 
 to be left in peace in the groove which habit had 
 formed. A sohtary! He had the sohtude of the 
 commercial traveler from Monday to Friday, and 
 the solitude of the unsociable, childless widower in 
 a small suburban house on Saturday and Sunday. 
 
 " Have you told him? " I asked Mary. 
 
 " Yes. I told him everything as quickly as I 
 could," said she. 
 
 " It won't do for me to keep him waiting," I 
 murmured. 
 
 " No," said Mary. " But, of course, he under- 
 stands you're an invalid." 
 
 I rose and went into the drawing-room, where 
 Mary left me with him. He wrung my hand hys- 
 terically. I asked him to sit down. He was nearly 
 as tall as myself, but thin, with a thin face, grayish 
 hair, and shining eyes. He sat down and then burst 
 into tears^ sobbing loudly. I could say nothing. 
 
 288 
 
DISTURBANCE 
 
 Then, between his sobs, he begaft to tell me how, 
 owing to an error of his housekeeper, Mary's 
 warning letter had not reached him till the pre- 
 vious evening. He did not precisely blame us for 
 not having made further efforts to communicate 
 with him, but I could see the trend of his idea. I 
 reminded him that I had been ill, and he cried: 
 
 " O ! I know ! I know it couldn't be helped." 
 
 Then there was a silence between us. 
 
 " I'd have given anything to see her again before 
 she died," he exclaimed. 
 
 " She was practically unconscious for several 
 days," I said. 
 
 "Anything! " he repeated, not heeding me. 
 
 " It's a most astounding story! " he said, wiping 
 his eyes — not furtively, but boldly, as though it was 
 customary for a man to weep and sob in grief. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The astoundingness of the episode had shaken 
 him violently out of his groove. The event had in- 
 vested him with a certain importance in his own es- 
 timation. He was the only relative of this beauti- 
 ful woman who at the age of little over thirty had 
 taken poison under the misapprehension that her 
 husband was dead. 
 
 " There never was such a thing heard of in our 
 family before," he said. 
 
 289 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 His sense of the family was aroused. He repre- 
 sented the family; he was the family; and the fam- 
 ily somehow owned Inez. I was merely a person 
 who had temporarily taken Inez away from her 
 family. 
 
 " Morrice! " he said. " I should like to see her." 
 
 He employed my Christian name awkwardly, as 
 one not accustomed to use it, and scarcely even 
 convinced of his right to use it. He was afraid of 
 me, chiefly, I think, because he occasionally saw 
 my name in newspapers. 
 
 I led him to the bedroom. I could not depute 
 this office to another. He imposed upon me his 
 own standard and code of propriety. We stood to- 
 gether staring at the sheet beneath which the form 
 of Inez's body was vaguely discernible. He drew 
 the sheet partly away and gazed at the face, and 
 sobbed painfully. 
 
 " Poor girl! " he muttered. " We were the last 
 of our family; and now I'm alone! If anybody had 
 told me that one of our family would ever commit 
 suicide — ! Where did she do it, Morrice? " 
 
 He continued to gaze in affliction at the disfig- 
 ured face as though he were gazing at Inez her- 
 self. I had to show him the bathroom, and the 
 large closet between the bathroom and the bed- 
 room from a shelf in which Inez had taken the bot- 
 
 290 
 
DISTURBANCE 
 
 tie of oxalic add. I had to reconstitute the scene 
 for him as well as I could. He was avid of de- 
 tails. 
 
 He burst out suddenly, his hysteric eyes glint- 
 ing: 
 
 " How can you be sure it wasn't a mistake? " 
 
 " A mistake? " 
 
 " Yes. How can you be sure she didn't mistake 
 the oxalic acid for something else? " 
 
 He clung to this notion, arguing for it with a 
 certain ingenuity. There was a bottle of laudar 
 num on the shelf, and an old traveling flask con- 
 taining a few drops of brandy. She would of course 
 be in a state of extreme agitation, perhaps almost 
 beside herself. Supposing she had meant only to 
 swallow a few drops of laudanum to help her to 
 sleep, for instance ! And there was the brandy, too ! 
 Had she definitely told me or Mary or the doctor 
 that she had intended suicide? No, she had not. It 
 was merely understood. ... He examined every- 
 thing minutely, then returned to the corpse, wept 
 again, and covered it up. Mary came in, to extri- 
 cate me, and he recommenced his argument pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 He stayed for tea, drinking a lot of tea but eat- 
 ing nothing. It was during tea that he heard about 
 the visit of the priest. Evidently he . regretted 
 
 291 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Inez's Catholicism, but he had forgotten it. The 
 priest would know whether Inez had meant to kill 
 herself. He would go and see the priest. Neither 
 Mary nor I knew where the priest lived. , But 
 Marion knew; Marion had already, it appeared, 
 shown curiosity as to the funeral service. Harold 
 departed. His last words were: " It's a very strange 
 thing to me, any member of our family committing 
 suicide! " 
 
 Then came the doctor, and instantly after him 
 the coroner's officer, with whom he had already 
 been in communication — a policeman. A policeman 
 in my home! I had to see him. It was always a 
 question of the corpse, the corpse. Nothing but 
 the corpse! I learned that by a fortunate chance 
 the inquest could take place on the morrow. The 
 corpse would have to be removed to the mortuary. 
 At night! These things were generally done after 
 dark. People preferred it. Neighbors preferred 
 it. . . . Endless, endless discussions, plannings! 
 When the policeman, helmet in hand, had gone, 
 and the doctor was going, I called the doctor aside, 
 away from Mary. An unreasonable thought had 
 flicked in my brain. 
 
 " You are sure she is dead? " I asked him. " Be- 
 cause " 
 
 " Quite," he replied, and looked at me. 
 292 
 
DISTURBANCE 
 
 He understood. 
 
 More men arrived. They were in and out con- 
 stantly ; men accustomed to death. A coffin ! And 
 when darkness had fallen the coffin went down 
 again. We saw no more of Harold that evening. 
 
 Mary went home for the night. I was alone. 
 Where was Inez, then? I endeavored to resume 
 command of my faculties, but I could not. In spite 
 of Mary's efiforts to shield me from the situation, 
 the corpse had dispossessed Inez in my mind and 
 would not be ousted. I slept, and could not even 
 dream of Inez. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 TO THE GRAVE 
 
 1WENT to the inquest. The doctor would have 
 signed a certificate that I was not in a fit condi- 
 tion to go — ^he advised me not to go — ^but I went. 
 I felt that I was bound to go ; it was a morbid desire 
 in me. As I passed out through the hall of the 
 Mansions into the Square I realized that the Man- 
 sions and the Square were agog about me, that I 
 was a figure of attraction. I was the man upon 
 whose eyes the coins had been put and who had come 
 to life again only to find that his wife had killed 
 herself from grief. It was a high sensation for the 
 Mansions. The demeanor of the janitor in the porch 
 was quite changed; superciliousness no longer 
 showed through the thin mask of the obsequious. 
 He summoned a taxicab with enthusiasm, and 
 seemed to wish to lift me into it. And as the driver 
 of the taxicab stared at my black, and stared still 
 harder when I gave him the address, I thought that 
 he, too, divined how sensational I was. 
 
 294 
 
TO THE GRAVE 
 
 The shapeless and shabby room — in some impos- 
 sible street — which served as coroner's court, was 
 crowded and stinking. My policeman was there, 
 bareheaded, officious, and busy whispering out his 
 authority beneath the cold, clear remarks of the cor- 
 oner to the jury. The coroner sat on a plain chair 
 at a plain table — a man, obviously, in whom con- 
 scientiousness strove successfully against a dislike 
 of being habitually overworked. You could see and 
 hear at once that he lived always in haste, yet would 
 leave nothing undone that ought to be done. The 
 jury, every one in an attitude of self-consciousness, 
 blinked in a pew. There were thirteen of them, ap- 
 parently more or less prospering dealers in small 
 quantities of small commodities. An honest lot ! I 
 overheard that they had viewed the bodies. I won- 
 dered why just they should have been chosen by 
 destiny to stare at the discarded envelope of Inez. I 
 wondered why the discarded envelope of Inez should 
 have been delivered over to their inquisitive and in- 
 different eyes. I thought how afHictingly cumbrous 
 was the machinery by which society protects itself. 
 I tried to think of Inez, to dispatch to her some mes- 
 sage ; but I could not, in that assemblage intent upon 
 corpses ; the mortuary — the museum of corpses — was 
 next door. All the faces of the witnesses and the 
 huddled spectators were under the sinister enchant- 
 
 295 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ment. The reporters, idle for the moment and open- 
 ly bored by the remarks of the coroner, alone were 
 exempt from it. 
 
 I found myself wedged in a group of gloomy 
 women who seemed to be blind to the advantages 
 of personal cleanliness, or who had tried to achieve 
 it and failed. I remembered that if Inez were there 
 she would see us all radiant, and that my punctilious 
 frock coat would be no more to her than the foul 
 shawls of these women. But I could not realize it ; 
 I could not. The obsession of flesh — and decaying 
 flesh — ^had been put upon me, and would not be 
 shaken off. 
 
 A neatly dressed lady in spectacles motioned to 
 me. It was Marion, apart for once from her apron 
 and cap. I had not recognized her. She was with 
 the cook. The coroner's officer had intimated that 
 it would be well for both of them to attend. Marion 
 wished to draw my attention to Harold, who was 
 gesticulating to me from the back of the court. We 
 had not seen Harold since the previous afternoon. 
 I made my way to him, and he began to explain 
 how he had arrived at the Mansions immediately 
 after I had left. He was in a state of considerable 
 agitation. The coroner's officer called out " silence." 
 " I must speak to you," said Harold. We went into 
 the street. It was the priest that was on his mind. 
 
 296 
 
TO THE GRAVE 
 
 He had had great difficulty in seeing the priest, had 
 not indeed seen him until that morning. The priest 
 had declined to tell him an)rthing that Inez had said 
 in confession, and was not to be moved by the argu- 
 ment that Harold was the head of Inez's family. 
 Harold was outraged, to the point of regarding the 
 whole organization of Catholicism in England as 
 a conspiracy against English family life. He asked 
 why the priest had not been subpoenaed to the in- 
 quest, and kept repeating that the priest ought to 
 be compelled to speak, and referring to the power of 
 the law. In his deep mourning he was an incarnate 
 protest against the invasion of his family by Cath- 
 olicism. Then the doctor appeared along the pave- 
 ment, and with his help I managed to convince my 
 brother-in-law that the theory of an accident was 
 perfectly untenable ; at any rate Harold affected con- 
 viction. I could see that he was secretly accusing 
 me of disloyalty to the memory of Inez in opposing 
 the theory of an accident. I could read in his face 
 his belief that he alone really cherished the memory 
 of Inez. 
 
 We were summoned by an excited voice into the 
 court. Already our case had been reached. The 
 coroner appeared to be entirely familiar with it. His 
 tone had somewhat changed. The unusualness of 
 the circumstances had produced its effect even on 
 
 297 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 him. In vain he sought to maintain his air of de- 
 tachment and use. Moreover he disclosed that he 
 was famihar with my name; he uttered my name 
 and calling with an emphasis of respect. The doctor 
 gave his evidence ; the cook gave hers ; Marion was 
 not asked to testify ; I gave my evidence. The re- 
 porters were as busy as they could be. The jury and 
 the spectators were gapingly intent, and sorry, when 
 the evidence proved to be so short. With all its 
 unusualness, the case was extraordinarily simple. 
 The coroner began his address to the jury with an 
 expression of sympathywith the husband. And then 
 Harold jumped up with a hysterical, " Mr. Coroner, 
 I beg to demand — " And instantly the court 
 thrilled. " Who are you ? " the coroner asked, 
 suavely, noticing, with his flair, the man's condi- 
 tion. " I am the sole remaining representative of 
 the deceased's family." The accident theory was 
 poured out, pell-mell, at white heat, and the priest 
 did not escape. At first I was shocked, and angry. 
 But the poor fellow could not help the explosion. 
 No argument could convince his emotion. The 
 unique event of his silent and monotonous existence 
 had occurred, arousing swiftly his dormant passion 
 for the repute of his family. An ideal blazed within 
 him. In his brief madness he was heroic. Impos- 
 sible not to respect his fervor ! He would fain reduce 
 
 298 
 
TO THE GRAVE 
 
 the grandiose and fatal act of Inez to the level of 
 a paltry mishap. He lacked imagination! . . . 
 And yet had he not imagination, narrow but 
 intense? 
 
 The sardonic curl of the doctor's lip, during 
 Harold's painful rhapsody, was surpassingly cruel. 
 
 The coroner summed up Harold infallibly and 
 immediately. He soothed him, with firm tact, flat- 
 tering him slightly by a few questions, and then 
 turned again to the jury. In five minutes the verdict 
 was given. I wanted to fly. But the coroner's of- 
 ficer had me in his grasp. The doctor went; the 
 servants went ; two reporters went ; half the specta- 
 tors went ; I, listening to other cases, had to remain 
 for the fulfillment of formalities, and Harold stayed 
 with me. At last, I received the paper which au- 
 thorized me to bury out of sight that which Inez 
 had abandoned. I left the mean and undignified 
 court and the overworked coroner, and breathed 
 the fine air of the street. ' I thought with relief that 
 all was over then. But Harold, sticking to my side, 
 began to discuss the funeral. He was intensely in- 
 terested in the details of the funeral. I asked him 
 to come home with me in my cab ; I could do no less. 
 Before we reached the Mansions we saw the placard 
 of an evening paper : " West End Suicide. Strange 
 Story. Scene at Inquest." And in the Square it- 
 20 299 
 
THE glimpse; 
 
 self we saw another placard : " Inquest on a well- 
 known lady in the West End." Astounding that I 
 should feel momentarily flattered because Inez, be- 
 ing my wife, was therefore " well known." Yet I 
 did. Harold, while inveighing against the prying 
 sensationalism of the press, was secretly delighted by 
 all this publicity. 
 
 The priest was in the hall of the Mansions, wait- 
 ing to ascend in the lift. The encounter between 
 him and Harold was extremely distressing for me; 
 not because it was violent — the priest had an ample 
 fund of diplomacy — but because I felt responsible for 
 Harold's behavior. I could not disown him as a 
 brother-in-law. The priest had come to see me ; but 
 the hazard which caused him to see Harold in seeing 
 me was positively malign. The presence of the lift 
 boy imposed silence in the lift. At my door, Marion, 
 aproned and capped as though she had never left 
 the flat, received us with ceremony. I took the vis- 
 itors to my study. The priest said that he wished 
 to see me alone. Harold objected that, as the 
 priest's visit could have only one purpose, he had a 
 right to be present at the interview. I was obliged 
 to support the man. The priest had come to inquire 
 as to the funeral ; he assumed naturally that I should 
 bury my wife according to the ordinances of her re- 
 ligion. Harold resented the interment of a member 
 
 300 
 
TO THE GRAVE 
 
 of his family with Roman rites. I could not tell 
 either of them that I did not expect to bury Inez. 
 I could not tell them that they might bury the resi- 
 due which she had quitted how they chose, for 
 aught I cared. I wondered if she was still in the 
 study, watching our radiant forms. 
 
 Mary entered. She had heard some uproar of 
 voices and meant to intervene for my bodily health. 
 She candidly detested Harold. She could not dis- 
 cern the idealist in him. She said that as Inez had 
 died' a Roman Catholic, as a Roman Catholic she 
 ought to be buried, unless I preferred a purely civil 
 funeral. It would have been difficult to decide 
 whether Harold or the priest was the more finely 
 lashed by her tone. I told the priest that he might 
 preside at the funeral. Harold was thunderstruck. 
 He departed, pale with shame and ire, and saying 
 loudly that he should not attend the funeral. When 
 he was gone the priest suitably regretted the inci- 
 dent. But in the evening, Harold returned, repent- 
 ant, ready to abase himself in order to gain some 
 share in the direction of the funeral. It was an emo- 
 tional experience of which his soul refused to be 
 deprived. His instinct was toward magnificence in 
 the funeral. We did not quarrel, but we spent to- 
 gether an evening and a day of deplorable tedium 
 for me. He fought for his ideal inch by inch, and 
 
 301 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the ultimate treaty was not entirely unfavorable to 
 his valor. In the execution of it he was unimagi- 
 nably active and urgent. I laughed to myself. Yet 
 I sympathized with him. The tension of his life in 
 those brief days must have been terrible, an awful 
 and dangerous pleasure to him. He and I went alone 
 to the funeral. At the chapel of the cemetery the 
 priest met us, all blowing in the July breeze. More 
 formalities! But by the mere efflux of time, it 
 seemed, the coffin lowered itself into the hole in the 
 ground. And Harold gave a last look at Inez. It 
 was Intz herself that Harold had seen nailed up in 
 the coffin. . . . His adieu to the priest was a master- 
 piece of icy fire. 
 
 " Good-by for the present," I said to him at the 
 gates, and hailed a cab, 
 
 " But aren't we going back in the coach ? " he 
 murmured, aghast. 
 
 I answered as gently as I could : 
 
 " No, my dear fellow." 
 
 Later in the afternoon an emissary of the funeral 
 furnishers came to the flat to inquire if everything 
 had been done to my satisfaction. The incident of 
 the cab had apparently caused disquiet. 
 
 " I suppose you haven't got the account with 
 you ? " I asked him. 
 
 But he had, by a fortunate chance. 
 302 
 
TO THE GRAVE 
 
 I wrote a check and paid him, and myself con- 
 ducted him to the door. 
 
 The incubus, the dead weight, of that which Inez 
 had abandoned rolled off me. I was free to think 
 of her. I was happy, by myself in my study, after 
 Mary had gone home to her child. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 MARION 
 
 AT breakfast, I had the newspapers, a couple of 
 . second-hand catalogues of books, and a few 
 letters of condolence. (Not a word nor a sign yet 
 from John Hulse.) I read the letters, noting with 
 detachment the difificulty of writing a letter of con- 
 dolence well, and the rareness of success in this task. 
 I did not open the book catalogues. I glanced at a 
 newspaper, page by page, and the effect was just 
 as if it had been printed in one of those foreign 
 languages which once I had learned so easily, but 
 of which now I had no knowledge. Nothing in it 
 made an impression on me, not even a title. My 
 mind was away, wandering at its pleasure, heedless 
 of control. 
 
 Could my friends have seen me there, sitting alone 
 at breakfast, in a room that was not a bachelor's 
 room, with a square yard of empty white tablecloth 
 stretching beyond the rampart of breakfast things, 
 on the morning after my wife's funeral, they would 
 have pitied me for a pathetic figure worthy of com- 
 
 304 
 
MARION 
 
 passion. Yet I was not unhappy. I may have been 
 pensive, but I was not unhappy. Indeed, I was con- 
 scious of a certain grave happiness. My solitude 
 did not render me disconsolate. I was no longer 
 prostrated by the shattering of the amorous enter- 
 prise which had possessed me when Inez avowed 
 her relations with John Hulse. I had no sensation 
 whatever of despair. And on the surfaces of my 
 mind I had many pleasurable sensations. The 
 splendid weather pleased me. The beauty and order 
 and silence of the room pleased me. The geomet- 
 rically regular creases in the damask tablecloth 
 pleased me. The food pleased me. I was gladdened 
 by the sure increase of strength in my body, the re- 
 turn of physical power. That body had once seemed 
 horribly gross, heavy, and unresponsive to me. 
 But, though I regretted lost freedoms, I did not 
 feel imprisoned in my body. And I wondered, not 
 at its incapacity, but at its power and skill. 
 
 I did not mourn for Inez. The death of Inez 
 caused me no sorrow, neither joy. The drama of her 
 life, and the swift circumstances of her departure, 
 seemed to me to be fine. All our lives had been 
 wrong with a fundamental and inclusive blindness. 
 But hers, viewed complete, had the harmonious con- 
 tours and the homogeneity of a work of art. It had 
 been splendid in its blindness, in the violence of its 
 
 305 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 intensity throughout, in its abandonment to instinct. 
 Her secret revolt during the years of genteel poverty 
 had a quality of continuous hidden violence that was 
 heroic for me. She had lived for the fallacy of de- 
 sire, but she had lived. And her death was of a 
 piece with her life. All the desolating tedium of her 
 inquest and funeral rounded off the tale. I saw that 
 tedium now as torture, but as exquisite torture. I ' 
 gave myself to it again, in retrospect, as to a sweet 
 pain. And how could it have been rendered less te-, 
 dious? It could not have been rendered less tedious. 
 The appalling and exasperating weariness of those 
 formalities was inherent in the ideals of the very 
 race itself. And now they were finished ; they were 
 over. That which Inez had quitted was definitely 
 bestowed. I sympathized with, I deeply understood, ^ 
 every person with whom those formalities had forced 
 me into contact. . . . Three days, and by chafing I 
 had lengthened three days into a century! Had I 
 to live them again I would yield myself to them ut- 
 terly as to the water of a tide ; I would live in them 
 minute by minute, with divine indifference. 
 
 If I had an inquietude, it was not caused by Inez's 
 death, but by my tingling consciousness of the fact 
 that she was alive. Where was she now ? Into what 
 errors was her radiant tissue of desire leading her ? 
 What false paradise was she beginning to construct? 
 
 306 
 
MARION 
 
 Absurdly, I felt fhat if, with my experience, I could 
 only speak to her for an instant, I, might save her 
 from ages of futile illusion ! All I could do was to 
 think of her, to think toward her. This I did, re- 
 turning constantly to the exercise with joy, and 
 picturing in my fancy the thoughts flying to her, in- 
 visible to my gross vision, but substantial to hers! 
 Warning, succoring thoughts that streamed to her ! 
 The convinced sense of this seeming miraculous 
 one-sided communication made me happy. Happi- 
 ness must have been apparent in my eyes. 
 
 So that when Marion came into the room I tried 
 to modify my expression, from a wish not to wound 
 or puzzle her. It was as if I had been ashamed of 
 my feelings. I stared at the paper, frowning. I had 
 not rung for Marion. It appeared that she had en- 
 tered in order to satisfy herself that I was not in- 
 capable of putting food into my mouth or of demand- 
 ing anything that I might happen to need. She 
 went behind me to the sideboard. 
 
 " Shall I get your cigarettes, sir ? " 
 
 " No, thanks," I said. " You can clear the table." 
 
 I rose and glanced out of the window. 
 
 When she had removed from the cloth everything 
 but my letters and papers, she suddenly stopped in 
 her work and turned her spectacles upon me. 
 
 " May I speak to you, sir? " She coughed. 
 307 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " Certainly," I said. "What is it?" Her defer- 
 ence •embarrassed me. 
 
 " I only wanted to know if you could tell me 
 whether you thought of keeping on your present 
 establishment or not, sir . . . now! I don't like 
 troubling you, but I thot^t you might be making 
 your arrangements. I've had an offer of a very good 
 situation at Oxford, and I thought if you were 
 thinking of giving me notice soon — If you un- 
 derstand me, sir . . . Sorry as I am to intrude." 
 
 " You must do exactly what you think best for 
 yourself, Marion," I said cordially. I avoided the 
 tone of a master to a servant, and spoke with easy 
 good-humor, partly natural and partly affected. 
 
 " It isn't that I wish to leave here, sir. Not at 
 all ! " she replied in her trained voice of servility, 
 apparently not perceiving my advance toward fel- 
 lowship, or ignoring it. " But I was thinking it 
 would be a pity to refuse this place at Oxford if " 
 
 " I don't want to change anything here," I said. 
 
 " Thank you, sir. May I tell cook the same? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 There was no sign of satisfaction nor of dissatis- 
 faction in her face or gestures. She proceeded with 
 her operations. I sat down near the window. 
 
 " I suppose you know what a woman like you 
 ought to do ? " I ventured. 
 
 308 
 
MARION 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " You ought to get married, instead of remaining 
 a parlor maid." I adopted a curt genialty. It was 
 a clumsy effort to break down the barrier separating 
 us, but it was an effort. 
 
 " I'm not one to marry, sir," she replied. 
 
 On the surface she was inflexible in her servility. 
 But I had stirred something profound in her that 
 she could not control. She flushed. Her voice shook 
 in the fervor of its sincerity. I felt that I ought to 
 apologize to her. I felt that I ought to ask this 
 woman to sit down while I apologized, and that at 
 least I ought to rise. I guessed now what had hap- 
 pened within the last few days. The object of her 
 desire must have promised himself to the other 
 woman who more purely desired him. The odd- job- 
 man, declining a parlor maid, had betrothed himself 
 to a prison wardress. Fate had gone against Marion. 
 A tragedy had enacted behind those spectacles and 
 her romance was over. She had loved beneath her, 
 and had lost. That was why she was ready to leave 
 London, why she was, perhaps, anxious to leave the 
 Mansions. I understood now the reason of her tre- 
 mendous preoccupation with the man on the night 
 of my seizure — a preoccupation so powerful that it 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 been approaching then, and she had known it. She 
 had known that within a brief space the man's action 
 would confer upon her either bHss or misery. It 
 had conferred misery, and, henceforth, " she was not 
 one to marry." 
 
 And all that she hid from me under her relentless 
 servility. 
 
 I could not fight successfully against her servility. 
 I could not ask her to sit. I could not rise. I could 
 not apologize. But I could regard her in the invio- 
 lable field of my own mind as a fellow creature — ■ 
 not academically, but really, passionately. I could 
 sympathize with her in the abrupt drama of her ex- 
 istence. My understanding thoughts went to her. 
 
 The conception of all Marion's past and of all her 
 future awed me as I invited it. She, too, had been 
 where I had been. She, too, had been cut off from 
 humanity! She, too, had made the discovery of 
 the radiant form! She, too, had constructed 
 paradises and witnessed their dissolution ! She, too, 
 had awakened to freedom, and seen the revealing vi- 
 sion in the uncolored light. She, too, had watched 
 universes winking in and out until the tale receded 
 into the supremest heights of coalescence, where 
 personal memory expired, where other individuali- 
 ties are sloughed and new ones assumed. Only she 
 did not know. She could not know, at this stage of 
 
 310 
 
MARION 
 
 her eternity. I knew solely by virtue of the accident 
 which had thrown me back into the envelopes which 
 I had cast. She was from everlasting to everlasting. 
 In her cap and apron she was from everlasting to 
 everlasting. Our exterior relations were fantastically 
 absurd, with her servility and my incurable air of a 
 master. ... A divine radiance asking permission of 
 its fellow to speak! Yes, fantastically absurd, but 
 scarcely to be modified save within the secret mind ! 
 Within the secret mind I raised her where she could 
 not mount. I dwelt on the grandeur of her long his- 
 tory; I carried her on from where she stood to the 
 sublime threshold of her ultimate destiny and return 
 to perfection ; until I was steeped in an ineffable mar- 
 veling. 
 
 All else seemed to fail in importance against this 
 secret realization of what I was and what others 
 were, and of the unique joy of sympathetic compre- 
 hension tending toward unity. 
 
 Marion primly shut the door, but not on my 
 thoughts, which followed her though she knew it not. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 EDITH 
 
 I WENT into my study and sat down at the desk. 
 It was covered with letters and unopened pack- 
 ets in disorder, the collection of such a week as 
 perhaps not many human beings have passed 
 through. Once or twice during the previous day 
 or two I had written briefly at the desk — for exam- 
 ple, I had made out a check there for the expenses 
 of the funeral — but I had scribbled standing, as at 
 a passover, as a man will when his existence is up- 
 heaved, indifferently lodging my paper on the top- 
 most layer of the accumulation. The law against 
 deranging the contents of my desk had retained its 
 sanction throughout all those events. I knew, on 
 that morning after the funeral, that I must resume 
 or recommence my life, and though I had no plan, 
 no central idea for activity, I knew that the pre- 
 liminary of any scheme would be the purgation of 
 my desk. And I set leisurely about it. 
 
 Delving I came to a prescription of the doctor's, 
 stamped and numbered by the chemist who had 
 
 312 \ 
 
EDITH 
 
 made it up. I could not recall when he had writ- 
 ten it, nor decide whether it was for Inez or for me. 
 He might have written it on the night of my an- 
 gina pectoris, as I lay in delirium. . . . All that 
 was like history now, and the doctor himself had 
 receded temporarily into history. In a day I had 
 nearly forgotten him. He had assisted intimately 
 and vitally at great crises of my existence, he had 
 probably saved my life, he knew the nakedness of 
 my instincts — and already I had put him away into 
 a closed cupboard of my memory. He had come, 
 and he had gone. 
 
 At length I arrived at the lowest stratum, the 
 writing-pad, with the weekly date block a week 
 in arrear. I tore off the leaf. Scattered over the 
 blotting paper were a number of little round marks. 
 They were the marks of the tears which Inez had 
 shed as she sat at the desk after her confession to 
 me. I had watched those tears fall one by one 
 from h^r cheeks, and there they were faintly pre- 
 served in the blotting paper! Across the blotting 
 paper, too, was the record of Inez's large, careless 
 handwriting. She had written, then, at my desk. 
 With a paper knife I detached the upper sheet of 
 blotting paper and held it reversed to the light. 
 There were two of Inez's writings on it, one across 
 the other — telegrams. One was addressed to my 
 
 313 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 sister and ran : " Come instantly, very serious, 
 Morrice " — ^then two words that had not blotted — 
 " Inez." The other was clearer: " Realism, Lon- 
 don. Shall not come. Inez." It was one of John 
 Hulse's caprices to have a registered telegraphic 
 address, and " reahsm " was the word he had cho- 
 sen for it, characteristically. Inez had sent off that 
 telegram early on the morning when she supposed 
 me to be dead. She had not told him that I was 
 dead. She had not deigned to tell him that I was 
 dead; or she had not known how to frame the mes- 
 sage. She had confined herself to the essential. 
 Doubtless it was upon the receipt of this telegram 
 that John Hulse, furious against the instability of 
 women, had fled suddenly in disgust to Paris or 
 somewhere, to rearrange his plans. And he had 
 not returned. As yet he probably knew nothing, 
 unless he had seen the English papers. 
 
 I held the historical document in my hand, hesi- 
 tatingly. Then I tore it up into small pieces and 
 dropped it, quietly, into the waste-paper basket. I 
 could not have kept it. Had I kept it I should 
 have deemed myself guilty of a repugnant senti- 
 mentality. And. perhaps it was too sacred to keep. 
 
 I mu3ed a long time on history. Although it 
 was my pride to regard history with the large mag- 
 nanimous calm of a philosopher, I was shaken by 
 
 314 
 
EDITH 
 
 the unexpected revelation of that document. I 
 could not analyze my feelings. Let us say merely 
 that I was conscious of an exceeding strange emo- 
 tion. 
 
 And then the door leading from the drawing- 
 room was cautiously opened, and I saw the smil- 
 ing, rather roguish face of a woman in a large, 
 black hat, and under that face the smiling serious 
 face of a little girl. They were peeping at me. 
 Their playful intention had been to startle the soli- 
 tary man in his study, and they had succeeded. 
 
 " I've brought Edith to see you," said Mary. 
 
 Holding my niece's hand she came into the 
 room. 
 
 To see these two together, especially in panoply, 
 was a moving sight. Mary gazed on her offspring 
 with a passionate and proud affection which no re- 
 serve of demeanor could hide. It had always seemed 
 strange, piquant, to me that my sister should be a 
 mother like other women, and that she should have 
 passed through a great tragedy of her own. My 
 sister always seemed to me to be, not a grown-up 
 woman, but the girl that I had known as a youth, 
 brilliantly imitating a grown-up woman in appear- 
 ance, gesture, and wisdom. There were moments 
 when her face had the expression of a girl's, and 
 not at all of a mother's, of a widow's. And just 
 21 315 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 now, as she gazed at her child, it had the expres- 
 sion of a girl's and of a mother's, too. It was young, 
 and yet it was old. It was innocent and yet it was 
 experienced, disillusioned, and ironic. It had in it 
 everything. 
 
 Whenever she was with her child the glance of 
 her eye and the gestures of her body appeared to 
 be saying: " I am a sensible mother. I do not de- 
 ceive myself about Edith. I am not silly about her. 
 I treat her with firmness. I exact obedience. I am 
 not a slave to her. I do not consider her to be 
 the most marvelous child that was ever born. I 
 merely do my best to bring her up properly and to 
 keep her in good health. I am absolutely impar- 
 tial concerning her. The last thing I wish is to 
 weary people with her. . . . Still, you will proba- 
 bly admit of your own accord that she does genu- 
 inely differ from the ordinary." 
 
 You looked at Edith and, if you could see, you 
 saw a miracle. A delicate plant, and Mary, by the 
 long miracle of expert knowledge, watchfulness, 
 self-control, and perseverance, was flowering it in 
 perfection. The contour of those cheeks, the ex- 
 quisite bloom on them — these were not Mary's 
 creation, but she had evolved them; their flawless- 
 ness was her creation. The white frock, cap, stock- 
 ings, shoes, gloves — in every incredibly meticulous 
 
 316 
 
EDITH 
 
 detail you could discern Mary and her maternal 
 passion. The article was finished, in every way fin- 
 ished. The article represented years of the activity 
 of a first-class brain and of a terrible affection. It 
 was put forward, with superficial negligence, as be- 
 ing a triflle, a mere female infant conscientiously 
 cared for, such as exists in tens of thousands all 
 over England. But in the slight involuntary trem- 
 bling of the head of the mother, in the lifting of 
 that head, in the proud dart from the mother's eye, 
 there was a supreme challenge. It was as if Mary 
 had cried aloud : 
 
 " There ! . . . Can you match it ? " 
 
 Edith, without instructions, came primly for- 
 ward to me, walking just as though she were a pro- 
 cession, and raised her mouth to kiss my cheek. 
 She had, I knew, been taught never to kiss any- 
 body on the mouth except her mother. 
 
 " Good morning, uncle." 
 
 She stared at me curiously, wonderingly. i 
 
 " Good morning, Edith." 
 
 I lifted my eyebrows as high as I could, in a 
 question, and stuck out my knee, glancing at it. 
 
 She smiled and nodded assent, and then I 
 perched her on my knee, and she smoothed her 
 frock, and sighed, looking round the room. In an- 
 other moment, a contraction of the muscles draw- 
 
 i^7 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ing her thighs into line with her back warned me 
 that she had had enough of my knee. She slipped 
 'down, and leaned against it, folding her arms like 
 an old woman. That flufify cocoon of linen and 
 lace was between my knees, and I could detect the 
 faint, fine color of a new frock and of clean warm 
 flesh. Both Mary and I looked at her. She was 
 quite accustomed to being looked at. In spite of 
 her mother's despotism and frigid impartiality, she 
 knew that she was the center of the world and the 
 most important thing in it. Her mother's stupen- 
 dous and to her often tiresome particularity in all 
 that concerned her was a subtle and intense flat- 
 tery to her. 
 
 " I was thinking," said Mary. " You wouldn't 
 mind me leaving her here this morning while I go 
 and do some errands." 
 
 She said it with an ofifhand air, simulated. A 
 prevarication, of course! Mary had brought Edith 
 with the sole aim of distracting me. She had been 
 saying to herself: " It would be a good thing for 
 him to have Edith for a while. It would take him 
 out of himself." And she had determined to accord 
 me the incomparable toy, the toy beyond rubies. 
 
 " The point is," I said. " Whether we can trust 
 mother to go out alone, isn't it, Edith? " 
 
 " Yes," she agreed, smiling confidentially at her 
 318 
 
EDITH 
 
 mother as if to say: " We must humor this clown, 
 because we Hke him." 
 
 As soon as Marion had been summoned and we 
 had arranged that mother and daughter should 
 lunch with me, Mary prepared to depart. 
 
 " Aren't you going to take your hat and gloves 
 off, Edith, or do you prefer to keep them on? " the 
 mother inquired. 
 
 " Can I go into uncle's bedroom? " Edith asked. 
 
 " Why, of course! " I said. " There are several 
 glasses." 
 
 " Better kiss me before you go," said her mother. 
 " There's no knowing how long you'll be, and I 
 can't wait." 
 
 They kissed. No injunction from the mother to 
 the child to be good, no specific behests or pro-' 
 hibitions! Another of Mary's fads was never to 
 train her child in public. Edith went toward the 
 little door, raised her arm to turn the knob, turned 
 it with difficulty, and vanished, shutting the door 
 behind her, to remove her street attire. 
 
 " There was one thing I thought of," said Mary, 
 as soon as we were alone, with the change of voice 
 that the departure of a child always brings about. 
 " I thought I'd better mention it to you at once. 
 Would you like me to go through Inez's things for 
 you? Or would you prefer to do that yourself ? It 
 
 319 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 won't do to leave them about indefinitely, will 
 it?" 
 
 The immediate propriety of this task had not oc- 
 curred to me. 
 
 " I wish you would," I said. 
 
 " Of course you'll keep the jewelry? " she said. 
 
 " Yes," I said. 
 
 We could neither of us speak in natural tones. 
 
 I followed Mary put of the room to the vesti- 
 bule. There we encountered the cook, who, ex- 
 cited about the lunch, was anxious to learn exactly 
 what Miss Edith might and would eat. A consid- 
 erable discussion ensued, fostered by the cook. 
 The cook kept protesting that not for the whole 
 world would she have anything happen to Miss 
 Edith through her agency, in the way of indiges- 
 tion. Seeing that Mary scarcely ever brought 
 Edith to London, it was highly perspicuous of the 
 cook to have divined that Edith was in fact the 
 center of the world. 
 
 When I went back to the study I discovered 
 Edith sliding down from a chair in front of a dwarf 
 bookcase. The top of this bookcase was the ap- 
 pointed place of my crimson Bernard-Moore vase. 
 The vase now lay on the carpet, in three pieces. 
 
 " I don't know what mother will say! " Edith 
 murmured, smoothing her frock again, and glanc- 
 
 320 
 
EDITH 
 
 ing at me. Her face was flushed. " You know, 
 I'm always climbing, and mother can't under- 
 stand it, and I'm sure I can't! " 
 
 " Perhaps the vase fell off by itself," I said. 
 " Vases sometimes do, especially red vases." 
 
 " Oh, no! " she assured me. " I got on to the 
 chair and knocked against it, and off it fell. I 
 nearly — nearly caught it, but vases are so slip- 
 pery." 
 
 " What did you get on the chair for? " 
 
 " So that I could see on to the top of the book- 
 case. Mother says she's afraid I shall be a moun- 
 taineer." 
 
 " What is a mountaineer? " 
 
 "Oh! Uncle! Don't you know Excelsior? I 
 do. ' A banner with the strange device.' That's a 
 mountaineer. Only mother says they never go up 
 at night. They always start before breakfast, be- 
 fore even the gas lamps are turned out. So it is 
 night after all, but backward. I don^t know what 
 mother will say." 
 
 " Will she be angry? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! She's never angry. She reasons with 
 me. I wish she would be angry. When she rea- 
 sons with me it's awful. It makes me so ashamed. 
 Then she asks me whether I don't think I ought to 
 do something to myself to make me remember. 
 
 321 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 And of course, I say I will, because I ought. Then I 
 have to think of something that I can do to myself. 
 So mother doesn't punish me, I punish myself. 
 Mother says in the end we always punish ourselves 
 when we go against reason. And it's very diffi- 
 cult." 
 
 "What is?" 
 
 " Punishing myself. Sometimes I feel afterwards 
 somehow as if I'd punished myself too hard, and 
 sometimes not hard enough. I know how I shall 
 have to punish myself for this. I'm invited to a 
 garden party to-morrow afternoon, and I shall have 
 to punish myself by not going. I can't see any- 
 thing else for it. And I did want to go, because 
 there'll be ices. And I can only have ices when 
 I'm out. Mother says ices are quite against rea- 
 son, but when I'm out I can have a little one, be- 
 cause it's not nice to seem peculiar in your ways." 
 
 "Well," I said, "if I were you I shouldn't 
 breathe a word about this vase business to any- 
 one." 
 
 " Not to mother? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But I must. I've broken it." 
 
 " Well ! It's my vase. Suppose I thank you for 
 breaking it? Suppose I wanted it broken? " 
 
 " But I was climbing up things. No sooner had 
 322 
 
EDITH 
 
 I got into the room, than I began climbing up 
 things. And I'm always doing it, away from home. 
 I don't do it much at home because I've been up 
 nearly everywhere at home, and I know what's on 
 the top of everything." 
 
 " And supposing I say that I like you to climb 
 up? Supposing I tell you that curiosity is a 
 great virtue? " 
 
 " Is it? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I shall have to tell mother. So it's no use." 
 
 " It seems to me that you don't care twopence 
 what I think. It's only what your mother thinks 
 that you care about. After all, it's my vase you've 
 broken, not your mother's. If I'd been sorry 
 about it, you would have had to apologize to me 
 and said how sorry you were and all that sort of 
 thing. But as I'm glad, and as I don't want any 
 fuss made, and as I like you to have an ice now 
 and then, and as I'm not very well and have to be 
 humored — ;! think I ought to be allowed to decide 
 what's going to happen. Besides, you're an inde- 
 pendent human being, aren't you? " 
 
 " That's what mother often says." 
 
 " And I'm a great deal older than your mother." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " I shall have to tell mother." 
 323 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " Very well, then," I yielded. " But let's pick 
 up the pieces." 
 
 I bent down to pick up the pieces. But Edith 
 did not follow me. When I looked at her again, I 
 saw her lower lip dropping, dropping, and all the 
 curves of her face developing angles. She was in 
 the gravest danger of tears. And I had not sus- 
 pected it. I had thought that she had been argu- 
 ing the point of conduct with a complete absence 
 of emotion. The threatened fit of crying seemed 
 like a catastrophe to me. And it was perilously 
 imminent. I dropped the pieces of the vase on to a 
 table, and took Edith in my arms and sat down 
 with her in the easy-chair, and tried to soothe her 
 grief. I had her close to me. Her head was on my 
 waistcoat, and her bare little legs sprawling over 
 mine, and her hair about my chin. I could feel her 
 heart beating, and the thrill of her body. I could 
 feel a sob gathering within her to burst. I mur- 
 mured to her. ... It was the narrowest escape. 
 A trifle, a nothing, and she would have wept vio- 
 lently! But the storm edged oflf. After a few mo- 
 ments she gazed up at me with a melancholy smile. 
 I had an extraordinary and exquisite sense of in- 
 timacy with her. 
 
 " Perhaps I needn't tell mother," she whispered. 
 
 " Well," I said. " I don't want to overpersuade 
 324 
 
EDITH 
 
 you. You do as you like. But if I were you, I 
 should say nothing about it." 
 
 "And it is very hot weather, isn't it? " 
 
 " What's that got to do with it? " 
 
 " It's so what I call icy weather." 
 
 " You're right," I said. " It's very icy weather." 
 
 Later she said: 
 
 " Well, that's over! But you know,' uncle, 
 you're only pretending you don't care for that 
 vase." 
 
 " I'm not saying it wasn't a decent sort of vase," 
 I replied. 
 
 " Was it hersf " she asked in an awed voice. 
 
 " Whose? " 
 
 " Auntie's." In a still lower tone. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " There I go again ! " said Edith. " Mother said 
 I was not to say anything to you at all about 
 auntie. But I really couldn't help that. If it had 
 been auntie's vase I think I should have had to tell 
 mother, then. So I was bound to know. . . . 
 Then why were you so fond of it? " 
 
 " I'll tell you why I was fond of it. And you 
 mustn't tell anybody." 
 
 " Not mother? " 
 
 " No. Not mother. I was once in this room 
 when everything melted away except that vase. 
 
 325 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 There was nothing except that vase, sticking up 
 by itself out of nothing." 
 
 " But weren't you dreaming, uncle? " 
 
 " No, I wasn't dreaming." 
 
 " Did you pinch yourself to make sure you 
 weren't dreaming? " 
 
 " No. But I knew I wasn't." 
 
 She reflected. 
 
 " I suppose things do happen like that some- 
 times," she said calmly. " I've always thought 
 everything was very queer." 
 
 We were silent. We said no more on that sub- 
 ject. Never since have I mentioned that subject 
 to anybody. And were I to mention it I should 
 never perhaps get a response so startling and so 
 satisfactory as Edith's. 
 
 I suggested to her the wisdom of hiding the 
 vase, and she agreed. Standing on tiptoe, I gen- 
 tly dropped the pieces one after another, behind 
 the cornice of my highest bookcase. 
 
 " I wish I was as tall as you, uncle," she said. 
 " Then I should never have to climb, and mother 
 would be ever so much happier. But I suppose it 
 wouldn't do for me to be taller than mother." 
 
 " Now, I think I shall write a letter for another 
 vase," I said. " But I shan't tell the man that this 
 one is broken. Because he's a genius and he never 
 
 326 
 
EDITH 
 
 makes two alike, and he hates to hear of them 
 being broken." 
 
 " Do they cost a lot? " 
 
 " No. About two or three pounds. The Chinese 
 used to make them thousands of years ago, and 
 then nobody was able to make them any more till 
 this man found out how to make them, because 
 he's a genius." 
 
 " I wish you hadn't told me all that, uncle." 
 
 " Why? " 
 
 " It makes me begin to feel sorry again. . . . 
 Uncle! " 
 
 " Well? " 
 
 " As I've mentioned her once, I suppose I might 
 as well mention her again. Auntie used to give me 
 a chocolate when mother brought me to see her. 
 And it's such a long time since I was here. Per- 
 haps if I could have a chocolate it would do my 
 sorryness good." 
 
 " Next time," I said. For I was actually with- 
 out this necessary of life. 
 
 " I think I know where auntie used to keep 
 them," she insinuated. 
 
 And as a fact she did know. She found a pro- 
 vision of chocolates in a lacquered box in the draw- 
 ing-room. And I had never known that there were 
 chocolates in that lacquered box. I passed the 
 
 327 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 whole morning In making the acquaintance of 
 Edith. She had visited me before, and I had vis- 
 ited her. But it was six months since I had seen 
 her, an in that time a new Edith had supplanted 
 the old one. 
 
 A very dramatic thing happened when Mary re- 
 turned for lunch. Edith and I, after touring round 
 most of the flat, were back in the study. Mary en- 
 tered, hot and hurried, and with a self-conscious 
 mien. She kissed her daughter absently, negli- 
 gently, and walked almost straight across the room 
 toward the dwarf bookcase from which the vase 
 had toppled. 
 
 " Why! " she exclaimed. " What have you done 
 with your rouge flambe vase? " 
 
 It was just one of those sinister coincidences 
 which victimize children, rendering earth an im- 
 possible habitation for them. I dared not look at 
 Edith, but I knew that she must be reddening. I 
 felt that all depended on my courage and tact. 
 
 "Oh!" I- answered. "I've been rearranging 
 things. I've put it on the top of a bookcase." 
 
 Happily she did not inquire further. I perceived 
 that she was very preoccupied. 
 
 " Captain Hulse is back in town," she said the 
 next moment. She flushed. She could not speak 
 his name, the impassible Mary, without flushing! I 
 
 328 
 
EDITH 
 
 too, was confused, but not for the same reason as 
 she. 
 
 " Have you seen him? " I asked. 
 
 " No. But I've been telephoning to him at the 
 club. He'd sent a note for me there. He only got 
 back this morning — and found both the letters I'd 
 written to him. It must have been a fearful shock 
 for him, of course! He's coming to see you this 
 afternoon or to-night." 
 
 There stood Edith, looking at me, conscious 
 that events had with grievous suddenness lessened 
 her importance to me. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 Johnnie's return 
 
 THAT afternoon I sat in my study, engaged in 
 nothing but thought. I had not as yet found 
 interest again in any kind of work. The occupa- 
 tions of my brain were Inez and, after her, the beings 
 by whom I was surrounded. My concerned curios- 
 ity about the ordeals of Inez, and the fresh piquancy 
 of regarding my fellow-creatures as immortals pass- 
 ing through a phase of eclipse — I had in this matter 
 and this experience, more than enough to make the 
 minutes fly. You may say I had always known 
 that death must bring strange ordeals in its train; 
 you may say that I had always known that my fel- 
 low-creatures must be in one sense or another im- 
 mortal, that at least the stuff of them was uncreated 
 and indestructible. Yes, it is true that I had always 
 known. But it is also true that I had never realized. 
 The realization pleasurably animated every instant 
 of my day. My thoughts hovered eagerly around 
 it as the thoughts of a man of genius will hover 
 round the discovery which he has made. All my 
 
 330 
 
JOHNNIE'S RETURN 
 
 senses were titillated, as when one is seeing a foreign 
 country for the first time. 
 
 Mary, before setting out in the morning, had said 
 that she could not stay after lunch. But later she 
 had changed her mind. And now she was employed 
 in the bedroom, going through all Inez's things 
 and deciding for me what was to happen to them. 
 Marion was helping her. Edith slumbered in the 
 dining room. The child could not have slept in the 
 bedroom without completely stopping her mother's 
 work, and Mary would not allow her to monopolize 
 the drawing-room. Mary had two principles in the 
 care of her daughter: Edith must never inconven- 
 ience others, and Edith must always be perfectly 
 tended. The war of these two opposing principles 
 sometimes caused difficulties that only Mary's brain 
 could solve. The lunch-table had to be cleared very 
 quickly, and the dining room cleansed of the odors 
 of food by Mary's own process of ventilation. Two 
 armchairs had to be placed front to front, and a 
 shawl stretched over their seats. Then Edith had 
 to be lifted into this pen, out of which the accidents 
 of sleep could not tumble her; and she had to be 
 covered, neither too lightly nor too heavily. That 
 Edith would duly sleep in this peculiar contrivance 
 and these unfamiliar surroundings, seemed to be 
 axiomatic in the minds of both Mary and Edith. 
 23 331 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Edith smiled at us in farewell, and the doors of the 
 dining room were closed on her ; and Mary assured 
 everybody that the ordinary existence of the flat 
 might and must proceed as usual, with no precau- 
 tions whatever of silence, as Edith's faculty of sleep 
 had been trained to ignore all noises exterior to the 
 room in which she actually was. Nevertheless the 
 flat was hushed. Edith slumbered. Edith was tak- 
 ing the rest which was essential to the perfect de- 
 velopment of a young child. This fact colored the 
 consciousness of all. More, it produced a solemn 
 joy in the flat, where no child had lived. 
 
 I thought of the placid and sad activities of the 
 women, and of the slumber of the young child ; and 
 the thought was happiness. 
 
 Then I heard vague sounds, signs of disturbance 
 of the current of our existence; and then talking in 
 the drawing-room. I could not mistake that voice. 
 It was the magnificent and rich voice of John Hulse. 
 He had come, then ! I did not doubt that it was for 
 this Mary had stayed. 
 
 I shook with excitement, with apprehension. The 
 image of John Hulse, which had been chained and 
 hidden by force at the back of my mind, leaped for- 
 ward like a beast into an arena, scattering every- 
 thing. He had come to pay his visit. He had dared 
 the adventure. He was bound to come. Conven- 
 
JOHNNIE'S RETURN 
 
 tion compelled him to come. He had not dared to 
 stay away. ... I was the outraged husband, he 
 the virtual adulterer. Chance alone had prevented 
 the consummation of the injury against me. Here 
 was the man who had made a rendezvous with my 
 wife, in my drawing-room, after dining with me. 
 I had to meet him. I might have written to him and 
 so prevented the meeting. I might have told my 
 secret to Mary, and so prevented the meeting; but 
 I had done nothing. If I followed social precedent, 
 any but formal and brief intercourse between us 
 was impossible. If I followed social precedent I 
 should indicate to him, by a glance, a tone, or a 
 horsewhip, that I was aware of my misfortune and 
 of his share in it ; and he would quit the flat at once, 
 never to reenter it. And I should stand in the 
 midst of my hearthrug with anger sated. 
 
 But I could not feel a genuine anger. Something 
 base in me tried to summon up a genuine anger, and 
 failed. I could not be at once resentful against him 
 and honest with myself. ..." What ! Love your 
 enemies by all means, but love the man who has tried 
 to seduce your wife? Monstrous! " I am on what 
 is termed dangerous ground here. But I am indiffer- 
 ent because I feel so secure. The deepest feeling in 
 me was one of sympathy with John Hulse. Call it 
 monstrous. It may be monstrous that the deepest 
 
 333 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 feeling in me was one of sympathy with John Hulse ; 
 but it is true. I understood him so well; I under- 
 stood Inez so well. I could see the germination of 
 the sentiment between them. An inflection from 
 her, a glance from him, and it was born ! They both 
 ignored it at first, but there it was, growing. From 
 ignoring it, they came to smiling at it. Then it 
 tempted them. It tempted Inez more than John 
 Hulse. She more than Johnnie fed it with the 
 strengthening food of reflection. I could hear her 
 words, uttered to me in the room where I was : I've 
 stood it too long . . . getting up in the morning with 
 the feeling that no man was thinking about me . . . 
 that no man was happy or unhappy because of me. 
 . . . How many years have I stood that? . . . These 
 words, or words to that efifectl The original fault 
 was mine. My enormous egoism had brought it 
 about. I had not been clever enough even to di- 
 vine my wife's habitual thoughts on getting up in 
 a morning! And the words of Inez which above all 
 others sounded in my ears were the slashing, 
 wounding phrase: It was just like you! A phrase 
 spoken under a misapprehension, a phrase entirely 
 unjust as she meant it; but how terribly indicative 
 of the attitude of mind toward me which my bland 
 conduct had induced in her! How expressive of 
 the secret bitterness with which my attitude toward 
 
 334 
 
JOHNNIE'S RETURN 
 
 her had impregnated her love for me! For she had 
 loved me. The abandonment of her outburst when 
 she had flung herself on my lifeless body was proof 
 enough that throughout her relations with Johnnie 
 Hulse she had loved me. It was my intellectual 
 pride and the ferocity of my artistic egoism that, 
 after desolating her, had pricked her into the arms 
 of Johnnie Hulse. ... I knew the arguments 
 which she would use to excuse herself to herself, and 
 the arguments which he would use. I could appre- 
 ciate their seductive plattsibility. . . . After all 
 (they would say) why not? It can't hurt him. It's 
 nobody's concern but ours! It's nothing! . . . 
 And so the sentiment kept on growing, until it 
 commanded and was imperious; and perhaps it 
 frightened and fascinated Inez. 
 
 I knew so well what Hulse would be saying to 
 himself that it was as if I had actually been Hulse. 
 How he would conquer his first distaste for the ca- 
 price by what he would call the " de-sentimentali- 
 zation " of it, the stripping from it of all conven- 
 tional preconceptions! ... I knew his immense 
 conviction that in love there was only one crime — 
 the crime of indiscretion. I knew the terrific force 
 of habit upon him. I knew the certainty in him 
 that he was acting justifiably for the happiness of 
 himself and of Inez, and that his one duty to me 
 
 335 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 in the matter was to deceive me with adequate 
 skill. I knew that he was perfectly capable of de- 
 ceiving me while retaining all his affection for me. 
 I knew that the constant tendency of hypocrisy is 
 to deny the capacity of the human heart to respond 
 to opposing feelings simultaneously. 
 
 Inez and John Hulse, these two also were the 
 blind and pathetic victims of desire, as I had been. 
 And was I to curse and wither the survivor in the 
 affected attitudes of Victorian tragedy? . . . John 
 Hulse, from everlasting to everlasting, imprisoned 
 for a moment in a radiant envelope of illusion, and 
 that envelope attached to a gross body of still more 
 fantastic illusion; and the episode with Inez a ca- 
 pricious error of the gross body, a sin far more 
 against John Hulse than against me, and at most 
 a moment within a trifling moment of eternity ! A 
 misfortune for him, not a crime! And neither a 
 misfortune nor a crime, but a nothing— (-nothing in 
 the vast and majestic evolution of the divine parti- 
 cle that named itself, just now, John Hulse! ... I, 
 with my acquired knowledge, could only ignore the 
 negligible transient vagary of the flesh that for a 
 moment impeded John Hulse's true consciousness 
 of himself. 
 
 And yet, while I reasoned thus, my hand trem- 
 bled at the prospect of having to meet Johnnie 
 
 336 
 
JOHNNIE'S RETURN 
 
 Hulse, for I doubted whether I possessed suffi- 
 cient force to triumph, in practice, against conven- 
 tion. And I guessed that he, too, was appre- 
 hending the interview with fear, was wondering 
 anxiously whether Inez had confessed to me before 
 she died, was consoHng himself with the reflection 
 that at any rate it would be best to get the inter- 
 view over, for good or for evil. And the appre- 
 ciation of this state increased my nervousness. So 
 that I could not bring myself to rise and go into the 
 drawing-room. He was talking to Mary even more 
 loudly than usual — evidence that he was indeed 
 nervous and excited. I must go to him. If I did 
 not go to him, Mary, totally unaware of the two 
 dramas hidden on either side of her, would be com- 
 ing to fetch me. 
 
 I arrived at the door between the two rooms, my 
 fingers on the knob. Involuntarily I made the knob 
 click. I was bound to enter then, and I did enter, 
 suddenly. 
 
 He stood on the hearthrug, in his familiar favor- 
 ite posture, with his hands behind him, listening to 
 something that Mary was saying about our doc- 
 tor. He wore a light traveHng suit, as if he had just 
 arrived from beneath the suns of a scorching cli- 
 mate. But his face was rather pale. He turned at 
 my entry, and Mary ceased speaking. Our eyes 
 
 337 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 met. My throat was so strangely dry that I could 
 not articulate a word. He hesitated, and then, ap- 
 proaching me, he held out his hand. His features 
 showed the uncertainty of his thoughts. 
 
 " Well, old man," he exclaimed. " I'm back, 
 you see! " 
 
 His hand seized mine. I said to myself: " Un- 
 less I can control myself better than this, he will 
 guess that Inez confessed to me, and everything 
 will be finished between us." Then a happy instinct 
 prompted me to press his hand strongly. He was 
 reassured. Both he and Mary imagined that my 
 emotion was merely that of the widower, meeting 
 for the first time after bereavement, his close friend 
 and the friend of his wife. The mistake was nat- 
 ural. I sat down. The worst of the ordeal was 
 over. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 
 
 WELL, Johnnie," I said, " what's the mean- 
 ing- of this mysterious disappearance? " 
 
 I put the question to him almost innocently, al- 
 most as though I was not perfectly aware of the 
 origin of his flight. Even to mysdf I played the 
 man who knew nothing. 
 
 " I had to go off to Paris to see Durand-Ruel," 
 he replied, quite at ease. " I had the letter at night, 
 and I caught the ten o'clock train." 
 
 " Not like you to be up so early as all that! " I 
 said. 
 
 The " letter " which he had received was, of 
 course, Inez's telegram. 
 
 " And when I was once there, I didn't see the 
 point of coming back. The fact is, I went down to 
 the Cafe des Lilas, and found a new lot there, nat- 
 urally! Infants, most of them! Simple infants! 
 Of course I had to go to the Bal Bullier. You're 
 always hearing people say that the Bal Bullier is 
 nothing to what it used to be. Rubbish ! It always 
 
 339 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 was half sham and half real. It's just as fine as 
 ever it was. The band is just as loud and the beer 
 is just as poisonous. The girls and boys throw 
 themselves into the dancing with just the same 
 frenzy as ever, and the hips of the girls have just 
 the same vulgar, agreeable swing. Only there are 
 more lights, and the fireworks are infinitely better. 
 But you never were allowed to take your walking- 
 stick into the hall, and you aren't now. The Bullier 
 hasn't changed, except for the better. It's we 
 that have changed. I met old Lazarus there — ^you 
 know. Conduit Street — sighing that the old days 
 were gone, etc. I told him straight that he made 
 me simply ill. I told him he looked like a crow and 
 that he ought to have been one. Some of those fel- 
 lows will almost thank you for insulting them . . . 
 I thought it wouldn't do me any harm to have a 
 few days at a big life-class. So I went to Cala- 
 rossi's. Hadn't a thing with me, of course. But 
 I called at old Lefebre-Foinet's in the Rue Vavin, 
 and he fitted me up. Same as ever . . . Told me 
 that Slaxon, A.R.A., if you please, still owed him 
 over two thousand francs for colors. But he seems 
 to flourish on bad debts. He's made a fortune out 
 of bad debts. He, too, began to talk to me about 
 the dear, dead days beyond recall ... I don't 
 know what people mean when they go on like that. 
 
 340 
 
THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 
 
 The fact is, people never do talk like that till their 
 souls have died in their bodies. When you come 
 near some of 'em you can sniff their decaying souls, 
 positively." 
 
 " Really — " Mary protested. 
 
 " Yes, really! " he insisted, not excusing the vio- 
 lence of his imagery. " / can, anyway. I can tell 
 you there wasn't much deadness down at Cala- 
 rossi's. My poor friends, the vital smell on a hot 
 evening! My poor friends, the heat! Models in 
 the same poses! And the same atrocious jokes! 
 The same appallingly bad work, and here and there 
 a bit of slap-up ! Same American virgins, talking 
 neither French nor English! It did me good. And 
 I learned something about what was going on — I 
 mean really going on; not what you read in the 
 Gazette des Beaux-Arts. I lived at the Hotel de la 
 Place de I'Odeon, and ate either at the Tour d'Ar- 
 gent or Laperouse. After I'd done with Durand- 
 Ruel, I assure you I never once recrossed the river. 
 Then all of a sudden I got sick of it, oh! so sick of 
 it I couldn't stand it a minute longer! I don't 
 know — it all seemed to me so — I don't know. I 
 spent my last night at the Ritz, and went to the 
 Marigny — I don't know why. That was only the 
 night before last. I meant to have come home by 
 the four o'clock train yesterday afternoon, but I 
 
 341 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 fidgeted about too long and missed it. So I 
 got to London this morning — and found your let- 
 ter! " 
 
 With the last four words he glanced at Mary, 
 and there was an extraordinary change in his voice. 
 The change in his magnificent voice made Mary's 
 eyes humid, and I could feel a swift tightness in the 
 throat. Strange and powerful individuality! The 
 most original, perhaps, I have ever known! Who 
 could have guessed, from the passionate vehe- 
 mence with which he threw out the description of 
 his week in Paris, that within the previous few hours 
 he had learned of the death amid astounding cir- 
 cumstances of the woman who was to have become 
 his mistress? Who could have guessed that his 
 mind had the slightest preoccupation. And yet, in 
 the tone of those four last words — •" and found your 
 letter " — he in a flash revealed the depths of a mine 
 of feeling, moving us both. Not that he was re- 
 garding the dead woman as a lost mistress. No! 
 He had rushed to Paris in order to enable himself 
 to see that that affair of the heart was factitious 
 and unworthy of its danger, and he had succeeded. 
 He was regarding the dead woman as the heroic 
 victim in his friend's tragedy; he was regarding her 
 as a familiar, and as a human being. I had per- 
 fectly convinced him that I knew nothing, and so 
 
 342 
 
THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 
 
 his conscience was at rest, and there was no fear 
 in his eyes when they met mine. 
 
 Mary, captured by the magic of his tone, by the 
 tremendous life in him, and by his careless sincer- 
 ity of expression, stared at him admiringly. She 
 seemed to be quite unaware of herself. Uncon- 
 sciously she leaned a little toward him from her 
 chair, looking up at him, her lips somewhat parted. 
 Her face glowed; her eyes sparkled. Even the least 
 observant would have decided instantly: " That 
 woman is in love with that man, and very much in 
 love." Could she have seen herself she would have 
 been very painfully shocked. She so correct, so 
 reserved, so independent, so proud! She in mourn- 
 ing! She a mother! But she could not see herself. 
 It was her blind and innocent unconsciousness that 
 redeemed the crudeness of the situation, that made 
 the situation fine. And after all she was not a 
 mother, nor in mourning, nor jealous for the dig- 
 nity of her sex. She was a vigorous and sane 
 woman deeply in love. 
 
 " Tell me," said Johnnie Hulse. " I hope she 
 didn't have to suffer a great deal." 
 
 He frowned. Possibly a more ordinary friend 
 would have kept away from the great subject until 
 later in the interview; or, having arrived at it by 
 chance or by intention, would have been forced by 
 
 343 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 tradition into expressions of sympathy or sorrow. 
 But not Johnnie Hulse. He seemed to follow his 
 thoughts heedless of us. And his frown was near- 
 ly menacing — as though, if Inez had sufifered, he 
 would be capable of accusing us. The spectacle of 
 futile suffering generally led him to criticise sav- 
 agely a being whom he considered to have been 
 badly invented — the occidental God. 
 
 I shook my head, and answered quickly, before 
 Mary could speak, to show that I could talk about 
 Inez as calmly as anybody: 
 
 " She was too weak to suffer much." 
 " That's good ! " he murmured. " That's good ! " 
 There followed a silence, which he broke by ask- 
 ing Mary: 
 
 " How long did you say she survived? " 
 At the same moment the door from the dining 
 room was pushed open and Edith came in. She 
 had wakened up from a long sleep — ^perhaps the 
 voice of Johnnie Hulse had entered into her 
 dreams — and had climbed out of her pen and 
 blindly tottered, rather than walked, toward her 
 mother. She was no longer the prim and preco- 
 cious maiden, but the little animal half-aroused. 
 Her hair was tangled, her frock disarranged, and 
 her delicious face still swollen and crimson with 
 sleep. She rubbed her eyes with boyish fists, and 
 
 344 
 
THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 
 
 looked on the ground. As she approached her 
 mother, she threw her head back to get the hair out 
 of her bhnking eyes, and smiled in a daze. Her 
 mother took her, and kissed her, and with per- 
 suading fingers smoothed her outlines into some 
 sort of drawing-room decency. And Edith bridled 
 and yielded under the touches, smiling again 
 when her mother expressed privately to her 
 an acute surprise that a young woman so experi- 
 enced in the ways of the world should enter her 
 uncle's drawing-room in such a condition of dis- 
 hevelment. 
 
 " This is my daughter, Edith," said Mary. 
 " Edith, dear, will you go and shake hands with 
 Captain Hulse, a friend of your uncle's and your 
 mother's? " 
 
 These two had not met before. And apparently 
 Edith was not anxious that they should meet now. 
 She hung back, hesitating, reluctant. Johnnie 
 made a step toward her, and waited. Some would 
 doubtless urge that it was the infallible instinct of 
 childhood that held her away from the man who 
 was absorbing so much of her mother's affection. 
 But a child's instinct is just as infallible as that of 
 a dog — that is to say, it errs often. Mary bent 
 down whispering, and her hair touched Edith's, and 
 edges of Edith's frock were lost in the folds of 
 
 345 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Mary's black dress. And then Edith detached her- 
 self, like a boat from a ship, and walked sedately 
 across to meet Johnnie Hulse at the edge of the 
 hearth rug. 
 
 " How do you do? " she said stiffly, holding out 
 her trifling hand. 
 
 " My dear ! " Johnnie Hulse responded in quick, 
 generous comradeship, and took her hand politely 
 in his large, pale, hairy one. His smile embraced 
 her. Upon the least sign of encouragement or 
 even acquiescence from her he would have picked 
 her up in his arms and by degrees kissed her; he 
 was an impassioned defender of children and a sub- 
 scriber to the S. P. C. C. But she averted her eyes, 
 and drew off. Her greeting was the minimum of 
 politeness. She looked at her mother and then at 
 me, and perceiving that she had not enchanted her 
 mother by this chilliness toward Captain Hulse, 
 she came to me, and permitted herself to be perched 
 on my knees. She and I were now bound together 
 by the sinister secret of the vase. Her body was 
 still all warm with sleep. 
 
 We' could not maintain a conversation about 
 death in presence of Edith ; and Mary began to dis- 
 cuss the question of holidays, saying that I in par- 
 ticular needed a change, not to speak of Edith. 
 And she referred to Edith's tastes in the matter of 
 
 346 
 
THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 
 
 pleasure resorts, trying obviously to get Edith to 
 talk. But Edith would not be drawn from her re- 
 serve. Mary was the mother now, as well as the 
 woman in love. She sought to reconcile the two 
 roles. It was a most wonderful sight to see these 
 contrary winds blowing across her features. She 
 wanted to recommend Johnnie Hulse to her daugh- 
 ter, and yet she knew that recommendation would 
 be useless and that Edith's feelings alone would 
 guide her. And Mary's clear conviction that John- 
 nie must of necessity be at once captivated by the 
 charm of Edith — this conviction was almost pa- 
 thetic in its simplicity. 
 
 Then tea was served. Mary talked, and John- 
 nie talked; and I talked a little. Edith ate sol- 
 emnly, sharing my tea, and using my saucer as a 
 base of supplies. I felt that if only my vision had 
 been keener, I could have descried Mary's unut- 
 tered appeal to Johnnie Hulse: " Can't you make 
 friends with her? " 
 
 When tea was nearly over, I said casually to 
 Edith: 
 
 " He's all right, isn't he? " 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 I indicated Johnnie with a discreet jerk of the 
 head. 
 
 She nodded. She had been watching him in- 
 23 347 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 tently, and listening, but with the detached, impar- 
 tial mien of a Chief Justice. 
 
 " Well," I said, " go and take his cup; he's fin- 
 ished . . . Will you? " 
 
 She brought her legs and back into a straight 
 line, and slid down and obeyed. 
 
 " May I take your cup? " she asked him. 
 
 He was still standing. 
 
 " That's very kind of you," he said. " I was 
 just going to put it on the mantelpiece. Will you 
 put it on the mantelpiece? " He gave her the 
 cup. 
 
 " I can't reach," she piped. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he said, and lifted her, the cup rat- 
 tling in his saucer as he did so;. and she reached the 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 She laughed shortly, for a sign that she was pre- 
 pared to accept him provisionally on his merits. 
 And within half a minute they were seated on the 
 same chair. Mary's relief was childHke, painful in 
 its obviousness. 
 
 Soon afterwards Mary announced that she must 
 go, on account of Edith. She was content, and she 
 wanted to depart in the mood of contentment. She 
 felt no doubt her sensations sufficed for one day. 
 Johnnie suggesed that he and I should drive them 
 to the station and then take a turn in the park. The 
 
 348 
 
THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 
 
 ladies, with equal primness, retired to make each 
 other ready. 
 
 Johnnie and I stood silent together. 
 
 "Look here, man!" he said suddenly. "I'm 
 not going to say anything to you in the sympa- 
 thetic line. Not necessary, and I can't do it ! You 
 know me, and I know you. And that's enough. 
 Eh? " 
 
 I assented with a gesture. 
 
 I was startled by a little wave of emotion that 
 expressed itself by a touch of his hand on my 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Perhaps some day we may talk about things," 
 he muttered. " But it'll have to come by itself." 
 
 Undoubtedly he was profoundly moved. 
 
 " Yes," I said. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE DISAPPEARANCE 
 
 AT half past six in the morning as usual, I 
 L went forth out of the house, by the little 
 wicket set in the large double portals, and idled in 
 the sunshine of the street until the Fontainebleau 
 postman, chiefly attired in pale linen, came down 
 past the Palace from the head post office. 
 
 This transmigration to Fontainebleau seems sud- 
 den to you, and it seemed sudden to me. The fact 
 was that, in my indifference, I had become the 
 sport of Mary. August was nearly upon us, and 
 Mary, owing to a variety of causes, had made no 
 definite arrangements for her holiday and Edith's. 
 In the discussion of this question, on our way to 
 the station after my first meeting as a widower with 
 Johnnie Hulse, Johnnie had happened to mention 
 Fontainebleau. During his stay in Paris he had 
 been down to Fontainebleau, and had seen a fur- 
 nished house there which was picturesque and in- 
 convenient. It stood, the next habitation to the 
 Palace, adjoining the Palace, and was to be had 
 for sixty pounds for the season. Mary appeared 
 
 350 
 
THE DISAPPEARANCE 
 
 to decide in an instant, in the cab itself, that she 
 would take that house, if it was still available. 
 Whenever she was with Johnnie, a sort of reckless- 
 ness, a mood of brusque resolutions, took posses- 
 sion of her; and certainly what he said had a 
 strange influence over her. It chanced that neither 
 she nor I had been to Fontainebleau. Therefore I 
 was to accompany her. A change was imperative 
 for me, I was told. Moreover, Edith had a French 
 nurse. (She had already had a German and was 
 soon to have an Italian attendant, so that she 
 might be talkative in the principal European 
 tongues before ever hearing the sinister word 
 " syntax.") This nurse would obviously be very 
 useful on a French holiday. Further, this nurse 
 was a good creature, and it would be a pleasure to 
 give her pleasure, and she could not fail to be de- 
 lighted by the prospect of a visit to her native land. 
 Everything conspired. By the time we reached the 
 station we were practically, in Mary's mind, al- 
 ready installed at Fontainebleau. I acquiesced. 
 It diverted me to see Mary feverish and precipi- 
 tate. At the station Johnnie telegraphed to Fon- 
 tainebleau. In six days we were at Fontainebleau, 
 together with our cutlery and other furnishings of 
 a furnished house. 
 
 It seemed a large mysterious house, from the 
 351 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 street. To the left of the double portals the brass 
 and copper utensils of the kitchen gleamed through 
 a window. To the right was the dining room; on 
 the first floor a whole row of windows, and above 
 that a series of very picturesque red dormers! The 
 double portals, richly carved, gave access to the 
 parte cocMre, a kind of tunnel cut through the 
 house, and at the other extremity of the tunnel was 
 a courtyard leading to a garden. The high wall of 
 the Palace itself shut in the garden on one side, 
 and on the other were tall, yellowish-green and 
 bluish-green trees that curved upward and formed 
 a canopy in the sky. From the garden, too, the 
 house seemed large, with its rows of varied win- 
 dows. And yet on examination it would only 
 yield the dining room, a large bedroom over the 
 dining room for Mary and the child, and some un- 
 charted miles of passages that ended occasionally 
 in a cubicle or so. There was no drawing-room, 
 but there were two odd tiny rooms that could only 
 be reached from the courtyard. One of these Mary 
 denominated the bathroom, for there was no bath- 
 room and no bath. Happily the bath house was in 
 the same street. Edith's keenest deUght was to 
 see the bath come along the street, in a pony-cart, 
 surrounded by copper pails full of hot water. 
 Never before had Edith seen a bath in motion. Be- 
 
 352 
 
THE DISAPPEARANCE 
 
 tween us we must have taxed the resources of the 
 bath house to the utmost. The bath-man in his 
 striped apron seemed to be eternally crossing our 
 courtyard with a copper bucket at the end of one 
 arm, and the other arm sticking out horizontally in 
 the air. And the cost was ruinous. Mary was even 
 more childlike than Edith. She found the house 
 perfect, and each discovery of inconvenience was 
 a joy. Within a week we felt as though we had 
 been living in that house through ages of endless 
 summer. Johnnie Hulse visited the house in or- 
 der, as it was said, to satisfy himself that we had 
 fallen on our feet. He was now openly and ob- 
 viously in love with Mary. He stayed three days, 
 and ate every meal with us, and then without any 
 warning to me he departed. I knew not what had 
 passed between him and Mary but I knew that 
 something had passed. So far as I was aware, he 
 did not write to her, nor she to him. 
 
 Now on this morning, which was a Sunday, the 
 linen-clad postman gave me one letter only — not 
 even a newspaper — and the letter was addressed to 
 Mary in Johnnie Hulse's hand. I sent it upstairs 
 on her coffee-tray. And then, after I had my cof- 
 fee in the garden, I started for my walk about the 
 town. 
 
 In the Rue Grande black-aproned girls were ar- 
 353 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ranging picture postcards, toys, pens, crockery, 
 carvings, glass — all kinds of worthless souvenirs of 
 the pleasure city — on benches in front of the big. 
 shops; soldiers were hurrying to and fro on er- 
 rands ; an immense dustcart with its bell and shout- 
 ings passed from door to door; the newspaper tram 
 jolted along full of newspapers. as fresh as fruit; a 
 few people emerged from the church, whose bell 
 was ringing. The sun was slanting strongly upon 
 the early and fresh calmness of the town, to change 
 the confused opalescent coloring of its vistas into 
 crude whites and yellows. Under a deep blue sky 
 the day announced itself as torrid and windless. 
 And the workers were already shrinking from its 
 menace. Awnings began to flutter out everywhere 
 like bunting. I crossed the town and dived into 
 the thick, encircling forest. The letter occupied 
 my thoughts. It was as if I still carried it in my 
 pocket. My impression had been that Johnnie 
 Hulse and Mary had passed through a more or 
 less emotional interview at which she had enjoined 
 him to leave her and not to write. For if he had 
 not been advised or commanded to refrain from 
 writing he would assuredly have written earlier. 
 But I could only guess. Between Mary and me, 
 Johnnie had scarcely been referred to. Each of us 
 was afraid of the sound of his name. And the si- 
 
 354 
 
THE DISAPPEARANCE 
 
 lence concerning him was ominous of dramatic 
 events passing in secret, hidden from me. The 
 letter exasperated my curiosity. 
 
 When I returned through the town, the Rue 
 Grande had awakened into full activity. The black- 
 aproned girls were standing at attention before the 
 wares of their masters. Brakes loaded with bright 
 frocks rattled heavily about. The electric cars 
 threaded past each other at the loops. From the 
 open doors of the church came the distant gleam 
 of stained glass and the sound of an organ. High 
 mass was in process. And everywhere in the 
 streets the ground spaces were divided into sharp- 
 ly contrasting areas of glaring shine and dark 
 shadow. At our double portals in the secluded 
 Rue d'Avon Mary and Edith, dressed with superla- 
 tive elaboration, each under a sunshade, and seem- 
 ing to be inordinately typical of the British race, 
 stood waiting. It was for me that they were wait- 
 ing. 
 
 We had been advised that high mass at the 
 Church of St. Louis in the height of the season was 
 a " sight," a spectacle comprising a collection of 
 elegances and absurdities from Paris and elsewhere, 
 that was worthy to be seen by Britons. And on the 
 previous evening it had been arranged that we 
 should assist at the sortie. 
 
 355 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 There was self-consciousness in Mary's glance. 
 
 " So you are going? " I said. 
 
 " Of course," said Mary, rather curtly, as though 
 my idea that anything could have occurred to alter 
 her mind was offensive to her. " We shall be 
 late." 
 
 " Oh, no ! " I said. " It's only a quarter to eleven, 
 and it won't be over till eleven. A quarter of an 
 hour of it will be all you'll need." 
 
 During the brief stroll to the church, not a word 
 from Mary as to the letter! Nevertheless the fact 
 of the letter was written all over her face, and it 
 came out also in all the tones of her voice. Edith 
 detected the unusual, absorbed it and repro- 
 duced it. 
 
 The church was full nearly to the doors. Across 
 a long perspective of heads and diminishing arches 
 we saw a resplendent inclosure in which brocaded 
 figures attitudinized in ritual before a lofty altar 
 upon which garishly tinted windows threw shades 
 of color. A bell rang in the distance occasionally, 
 and an organ sounded brokenly from somewhere, 
 or vague voices echoed in the hushed spaces of the 
 interior. In front of us stood an enormous hatted 
 and uniformed beadle with a mighty staff. An 
 expectant silence, and then the beadle imperiously 
 crashed his staff on the stone floor and every head 
 
 356 
 
THE DISAPPEARANCE 
 
 was bent in obedience to the signal. The bell rang 
 distantly. I looked around in search of the ele- 
 gances, and saw none. The congregation was di- 
 verse, and in a corner were the white wings of nuns' 
 caps picturesquely floating over the gray frocks of 
 an orphanage; but I could discern no exaggeration 
 of fashion. Then a woman swept into the church, 
 followed by a little collared boy and a stoutish man 
 with a rosette in his buttonhole. Here was fash- 
 ion! The dark hat, the waistline, the fall of the 
 pale skirt, the cosmetics, spoke it. Every contour 
 spoke it. The woman went as in a trance to the ves- 
 sel of holy water, dipped her finger, touched with 
 her wet finger the finger of the boy, and simul- 
 taneously they made on themselves the sign of the 
 cross. The gesture was accomplished with the swift, 
 absent-minded perfunctoriness that only comes of 
 years and years of use. She was a little hot, and 
 she glanced frowningly at her husband, who stood 
 apart. She was extravagantly Parisian. She 
 might have come down from Paris in a bandbox 
 opened only at the church door. She was worth at 
 least a hundred pounds as she stood. She put her 
 lorgnon to her eyes so conscious of perfection and 
 stared haughtily a moment at the mysteries of the 
 altar. Then with a whispered word to her hus- 
 band and a tug at her child's hand, she was ofif 
 
 357 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 again, having shriveled everybody within range of 
 the disdain of those hard eyes. She was ofif again, 
 in her pilgrimage through eternity. I alone, per- 
 haps, knew where she was going and to what glories 
 she would rise when she had escaped from the gro- 
 tesqueness of her prison. Mary lifted her eyebrows 
 to me scarcely perceptibly, to indicate her opinion 
 that after that our visit to the mass could not be 
 deemed vain. 
 
 " Where is Edith? " she murmured suddenly. 
 
 Behind us was a little postern, showing the lower 
 steps of a winding stair. The person least experi- 
 enced in Edith would have known that the stair had 
 tempted her too strongly. I climbed the stair, and 
 came out at the top upon a gallery where a young 
 woman in a white blouse was blowing an organ, 
 and perspiring, and where a number of little boys 
 in black pinafores and belts sat uncomfortably on 
 benches. The secret machinery of the temple's 
 rite! Edith was there also, ready to go up even 
 higher, had she not seen me. She ofifered her hand 
 in token of contrition, and we remained a few mo- 
 ments looking down from the upper masonry of 
 the structure at the parterre of hats and the genu- 
 flecting priests and acolytes in the far distance. 
 
 When we reached the ground, we both saw 
 Johnnie Hulse by the side of Mary, who was whis- 
 
 358 
 
THE DISAPPEARANCE 
 
 pering to him, apparently angry, certainly angry. 
 He had a motorist's peaked cap in his hand. She 
 ceased to speak as she saw us. There was a new 
 silence in the church. Johnnie shook hands with 
 me silently, and he smiled at Edith, whose face was 
 moveless. We could not converse at the crisis of 
 the mass. The drama of our lives seemed to hesi- 
 tate while the rite of the temple was being fulfilled, 
 and we seemed to me awaiting in fear its resump- 
 tion. 
 
 My foreboding, then, was justified. The letter 
 had warned Mary of Johnnie's coming, and she had 
 ignored it. He must have arrived at the house 
 soon after our departure, and followed us. 
 
 The service was over, and we passed out from 
 the cool darkness into the bright furnace of the 
 street. Opposite, the black-aproned girls were 
 striving by their charm to sell postcards and views 
 of the Palace painted on irregular slices of wood 
 from which the bark had not been removed. A 
 small orchestra was playing dances at a cafe. The 
 pavements were everywhere busy, and the sun was 
 the aversion of all eyes. The season of Fontaine- 
 bleau was at full. We were under an obligation, it 
 appeared, to go into the neighboring confection- 
 er's. After high mass no visitor who respected him- 
 self could omit to eat a brioche or a cake at the con- 
 
 359 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 fectioner's. The shop, odorous with fresh pastry, 
 was already full of women and men that had set- 
 tled on its contents like locusts. The confectioner, 
 in her virgin apron with its artificial waistline that 
 curved downward below the umbilical region, sat 
 on a throne trusting to the honesty of religionists. 
 Mary did not speak, and even Edith was languid 
 concerning cakes. Johnnie and I had to make con- 
 versation. 
 
 " You're coming to lunch, of course," I said. 
 
 " No, I can't." 
 
 "Oh! But look here!" I protested. "That's 
 absurd. What are you here for? " 
 
 I glanced at Mary. No relenting sign from her! 
 
 " Really, old chap, I can't stay for lunch! " said 
 Johnnie awkwardly. 
 
 I thought that Mary was achieving rudeness. It 
 was incredible that she should not second my invi- 
 tation. Nevertheless she maintained her silence, 
 save to Edith. When we got out of the shop, the 
 congregation from the church had entirely van- 
 ished, so that in our emotional disturbance we had 
 missed seeing the piquancies of it. 
 
 " Well, good morning," said Johnnie queerly, 
 and held out his hand to Mary. 
 
 " Good morning," she responded, with a grim 
 compression of the lips. 
 
 360 
 
THE DISAPPEARANCE 
 
 I made no further attempt to pierce the mystery 
 of Johnnie's arrival and of his departure. I decided 
 to pretend that I perceived nothing extraordinary 
 in his sudden apparition. Mary's icy resentment, 
 his refusal of my hospitality, and the curt leave-tak- 
 ing. He quitted us, and no one mentioned him 
 afterwards. We lunched, for the benefit of the 
 servants, and Mary and I kept up a conversation 
 the sole end of which was to convince each other 
 by suavity of tone that our mutual sympathy was 
 not merely unimpaired but strengthened. 
 
 After lunch Edith was put to bed as usual, and I 
 also went to my bedroom on the second floor. It 
 was not an afternoon for exertion, either physical 
 or mental. I slept rather heavily without meaning 
 or hoping to do so. When I awoke — with only one 
 idea in my head, the idea of tea — I wandered about 
 the ground floor of the house, the courtyard and 
 the garden, which was beginning to be shadowed. 
 I wished, as I often wished, to negotiate with 
 Mary for an immediate tea. The cook, an ar- 
 rangement of blue and red, emerged informally 
 from her echoing kitchen to inquire into my un- 
 easiness. 
 
 " Is madame in her bedroom? " I asked. 
 
 " Madame is gone out. With a gentleman in an 
 automobile. Did not monsieur know? " 
 
 361 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 "When will she return?" 
 " Madame said nothing." 
 
 " You would be very amiable to make tea at 
 once," I retorted to this blow. 
 Edith and I had tea in the garden. 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 
 AT DARK 
 
 MOTHER has gone with Captain Hulse," 
 Edith remarked suddenly. 
 
 "Did she tell you?" 
 
 " No, uncle." 
 
 That was all the child said. She was not like a 
 child now. She had not the expression of a child, 
 nor the gestures. She ate and drank like a wom- 
 an. She suffered, and her suffering was translated 
 into an exaggerated precision and carefulness of 
 movement. She suffered without understanding. 
 Jealousy was her affliction; jealousy of Hulse, 
 whom she liked. She could have explained noth- 
 ing, perhaps; but she could feel, and she could fear. 
 She was wounded. 
 
 " We can't be expected to stop in all afternoon 
 because mother has run away," I said. " Suppose 
 we go for a walk round by the Palace, just you 
 and I? " 
 
 She assented, with an air as if to say that if her 
 mother chose to be independent she also must be 
 independent: a little revolt in her. She stood pas- 
 24 363 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 sive like an idol, under the great porch, while her 
 nurse, kneeling, smoothed out creases in the gos- 
 samer white frock and straightened the stockings. 
 We strolled slowly through the shade of vast court- 
 yards and past the innumerable windows of fa9ades 
 that were a rampart against the sun, and under 
 archways and tunnels with long glimpses of flow- 
 ered gardens and water shaking in the heavy sun- 
 shine. There were crowds of people. The monu- 
 ment of centuries of desire forever thwarting itself, 
 the relic of futile and tragic self-aggrandizement, 
 was so wonderful and prodigious that it drew the 
 curious from the five quarters of the world. It was 
 so immense, so permanent, that it defied even the 
 strong descendants of its victims to rise and de- 
 stroy it. It imposed. Impossible to believe, in face 
 of that pile the bricks of whose gigantic chimneys 
 alone would have built a town for philosophers, 
 that desire was woe and self-aggrandizement a stu- 
 pidity! The error persisted. I thought of the gen- 
 erations of occupants of that chateau whose fate it 
 had been to illustrate supremely the unnatural folly 
 of egotism for the instruction of generations that 
 would not yet be born for hundreds of years. A 
 fate surely deserving sympathy! And, wondering 
 where in that particular moment they were, in what 
 condition, in what captivity or freedom, I spent on 
 
 364 
 
AT DARK 
 
 them my sympathy. And there was the primly 
 trotting child, in her fragile and spotless frock, 
 fresh from the freedom of another plane, newly im- 
 prisoned in the old error, the prey of her own ego- 
 ism; silently and proudly fretting because she could 
 not monopolize the fellow-creature, her mother! 
 And I could ofifer no enlightenment to the child; to 
 enlighten would be a hopeless enterprise. But I 
 could visit her invisible radiance with my soothing 
 thoughts. > 
 
 As, on our return, we struck into the Rue 
 d'Avon, we tried to reassure one another. 
 
 " Mother's certain to be back by this time." 
 
 " Yes. Long ago. She'll think we've got lost 
 ourselves." 
 
 But we were neither of us as sure as our words. 
 We were afraid that Mary might still be away. 
 And our apprehension was justified. We resumed 
 our pretense of tranquillity. I, personally, was in no 
 way alarmed for Mary's safety. I knew that she 
 must be with Johnnie Hulse, and that Johnnie had 
 control of an automobile. But I presaged no ac- 
 cident nor contretemps. What bit me was sheer 
 curiosity. What baffled me was my perfect inabil- 
 ity to explain to myself my sister's vagary. When 
 the hour of Edith's bedtime came, we agreed that 
 she should stay up for dinner and that if after din- 
 
 365 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ner her mother had not arrived she should go to 
 bed. She went to bed at half past eight, still very 
 silent, and contemptuous of her nurse's facile com- 
 fortings. I was now conscious of a certain alarm. 
 Could there after all have been an accident? The 
 household was deeply perturbed within itself. I 
 went out into the town, to look for the face of 
 Johnnie Hulse over a steering-wheel. I inquired 
 for him at the hotel where he had previously stayed. 
 Nothing was known there. I walked up and down 
 the Rue Grande in the dusk. The flagons of the 
 apothecaries threw reds and greens across the 
 tram lines, and the trams passed like cages of Hght. 
 Outside the restaurants and cafes satisfied diners 
 were smoking and drinking. The same dances 
 were being played in the large cafe at the corner, 
 and next to it, in front of the big shops, the black- 
 aproned girls, interestingly pallid and languorous 
 after thirteen hours of burning pavement, were still 
 by solicitation disposing of souvenirs. I returned 
 home again. 
 
 " Has madame come? " 
 
 " No, monsieur." 
 
 " You can go to bed." 
 
 I sat in the garden under the waving plumes of 
 an acacia and watched the onset of night until the 
 garden front of the house was black save for the 
 
 366 
 
AT DARK 
 
 glimmer where Edith lay. No sound, except the 
 mysterious brushing of the unseen acacia against 
 the high wall! Trees and sky were mingled in a 
 violet gloom. I pondered upon the past and upon 
 the future. Then, startling, the loud, irregular 
 clang of the big bell ! I sprang up. It was she, at 
 last! I should know what had occurred to her! I 
 hurried toward the house. But there were steps 
 before mine in the blackness of the porte-cochere. 
 The servant also had kept vigil. I heard Mary's 
 voice anxious and hurried: a question about Edith; 
 then another about me. A lamp was brought from 
 the kitchen. She saw me. 
 
 " That you, Mary? " I cried, halting. 
 
 She came out to me. I sat down in the cane 
 armchair which I had just left. She took another 
 similar chair. There was an iron garden table be- 
 tween us. She leaned back in the chair, tapping 
 with her hands on its arms nervously. I could not 
 see her features at all clearly. What I saw was a 
 pale oval, with the drapery of a thin, white veil 
 about it, and below that a vague bodily form. A 
 light moved under the porte-cochere, and the serv- 
 ants murmured to each other. Then silence and 
 darkness away there in the house. 
 
 "Morrice!" Mary said. "I'm engaged to be 
 married again." 
 
 367 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 My heart seemed to have received a dizzying 
 blow. Yet I could not have been surprised. It 
 was, really, what I had been expecting. 
 
 " I congratulate you, child," I said. 
 
 " I'm very sorry^ it's happened now," she went 
 on. "I am, truly!" 
 
 " But why on earth should you be sorry? " 
 
 " You know what I mean," she said firmly, as if 
 warning me against the unnecessary trouble of 
 making pretenses. " So soon after Inez's death! 
 Less than a month! Morrice, I've often thought 
 I'd like to tell you, but somehow I've never been 
 able to — and I can, to-night. We'd none of us 
 any idea how much you and Inez were to each 
 other." 
 
 I said nothing. Nobody knew the circumstances 
 which had led up to Inez's death. The doctor alone 
 was aware that my seizure had been the result of a 
 quarrel with Inez, and the doctor was the very 
 grave of secrets. The priest knew, of course; but 
 the priest could not be counted among mankind. 
 The rest of the world undoubtedly thought that 
 Inez had killed herself from pure grief at my death. 
 Even Johnnie probably assumed that grief had en- 
 tered largely into her motive. ... In discussing 
 the death with Mary, if ever they had discussed it, 
 he had probably been ih a position to agree sin- 
 
 368 
 
AT DARK 
 
 cerely with Mary's proposition that Morrice and 
 Inez had cared a great deal more for one another 
 than their friends had suspected. . . . Yet he must 
 have had strange, strange feelings when the sub- 
 ject of Inez came up between him and Mary! 
 
 " Morrice, I'm frightfully sorry for you, and 
 I'm ashamed of letting myself be engaged now. 
 But " 
 
 " I know how you feel," I interrupted her. " But 
 it's quite wrong. How can your happiness make 
 me unhappy? You're thinking conventionally, my 
 child; that's what you're doing." 
 
 " I may be," she said. " I dare say I am. But I 
 can't help it. And I couldn't help getting en- 
 gaged, either! He's too strong for me!" She 
 sighed. 
 
 "Who? Johnnie?" 
 
 "Yes. He's much too strong for me. There 
 can't be many more men like him in the world. I 
 never thought anyone would bear me down when 
 I'd made up my mind. And I positively had made 
 up my mind that nothing should happen between 
 us two for at least three months. But he's borne 
 me down. Did you hear him come this after- 
 noon? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Well! " She gave a short laugh. " I had to 
 369 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 go out with him, or I don't know what wouldn't 
 have happened." 
 
 " Where have you been to? " 
 
 I could dimly discern her head shaking. " / 
 don't know! " she murmured in a fatigued voic6. 
 "/don't know! In the forest. Everywhere! Mor- 
 rice, I'm broken ! I'm crushed and there's no fight 
 left in me." She laughed again. 
 
 " You went off in his car? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And where is he now, may one ask? " 
 
 " He's gone back to Paris. ,We shan't see him 
 till we get to England again. I did insist on that, 
 anyway." Her tone showed a little triumph. 
 
 " Why? " 
 
 " Well," she said. "I did! That's all. I had to 
 have my own way in something. You'll never 
 know all we've been through this mortal day," she 
 continued, fanning herself with a handkerchief. 
 " Nobody ever will. Unless sometime or other 
 Johnnie takes it into his head to tell you." 
 
 " There's only one thing I want to know," I said. 
 " Is it all right r " 
 
 " Oh! Morrice! " she sighed. " Don't ask me! 
 I'm so happy! So is he, I do believe ! " 
 
 The simple gushing candor of the outburst was 
 girUsh, quite startlingly so in a woman of Mary's 
 
 370 
 
AT DARK 
 
 age, experience, and temperament. Never had I 
 heard such passionate tones from her lips. 
 
 " Give me your hand, then, child," I said. I, 
 too, was unwontedly moved. 
 
 My hand groped for hers. 
 
 " Nothing will be said to anybody else for at 
 least three months," said Mary. " That's most 
 clearly understood. It's all very well to talk about 
 convention. There's got to be some convention- 
 ality, for the benefit of the world." 
 
 (Where, I thought, was the ironic Mary?) 
 
 " What about the kid, then? " I askec*. 
 
 Mary paused. " I've thought of that. I thought 
 — supposing you were to give her an idea? " 
 
 The mother abruptly turned her head. The 
 steady night light faintly illuminated the window 
 of the bedroom. 
 
 " I must go and look at her. Give me your 
 matches, will you? " 
 
 I remained alone in the garden, with the trees 
 softly swishing their branches against the high 
 wall. I was aware of a considerable agitation with- 
 in myself. The thing, then, was done. Do you 
 surmise what I could hear in the heavy silence of 
 the night? I could hear the cajoling voice of John- 
 nie Hulse saying to my wife: "Will she be at 
 Brondesbury to-morrow at three? " and Inez's re- 
 
 371 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ply: "Yes." Little more than a month ago, that 
 rendezvous that destiny had interfered with! And 
 now she was dead. And he was betrothed to an- 
 other woman! The certainty that none but him- 
 self knew of his interrupted intrigue with Inez had 
 strengthened the temptation to which Mary's pas- 
 sion had subjected him'. The intrigue with Inez 
 had been an error, an idle and vicious caprice. 
 He had recognized that, I felt, before her death. He 
 had regretted it. Destiny, in cutting it short, had 
 been very kind to him, had made possible for him a 
 finer and honester future. Was I to be unkind 
 where destiny had smiled? Was I to punish where 
 destiny had forgiven? Was I even privately to re- 
 sent? Was I not to be loyal to the secret? Johnnie 
 ,and Mary were caught together in the spell of a 
 tremendous enchantment. It had followed Mary, 
 and it had forced him after her to overtake her; 
 they were . its victims. No more than to Edith 
 would enlightenment have been possible to them. 
 They demanded and needed naught but sympathy. 
 . . . What a marriage! John Hulse a stepfather! 
 The obdurate Mary striving to mold herself to the 
 shape of John Hulse ! And Johnnie, accustomed to 
 the softness of voluptuous acquiescences in women, 
 schooling himself to acknowledge the refusing 
 moral independence of an equal! A marriage ex- 
 
 372 
 
AT DARK 
 
 ceedingly perilous, that might develop as well into 
 a disaster as into a miraculous good fortune. They 
 must accept the danger. They and their friends 
 must face it. They could not deny fate. I would 
 not have had them deny fate. I respected too 
 highly the qualities of power and intellectual sin- 
 cerity in both of them to lack faith for them and 
 in them. I had indeed a sure faith that this ephem- 
 eral episode of their union, a point of fleeting con- 
 tact between the separate eternities that lay behind 
 and those that lay in front, would not cause them 
 too much regret when they looked down on it from 
 freedom. The desire which was to unite them 
 would daily provide its own antidote of discipline. 
 I understood them both deeply, past words. 
 
 A brighter illumination had now succeeded to 
 the night light behind the open window where 
 Edith lay. I could hear the faintest far murmur of 
 a voice. Later, the light went out entirely. 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 
 THE ATTITUDE 
 
 JOHNNIE'S life seemed to be always agitated 
 and violent. We had scarcely had five days of 
 quietude after the upheavals and flights of the Sun- 
 day, when word came that he was ill in bed. The 
 envelope was addressed to Mary in a strange hand, 
 and within were a few vague penciled sentences 
 written by Johnnie himself. Mary was thrown into 
 alarm, chiefly by the significant fact that Johnnie 
 had not found energy to address his own envelope. 
 The illness must, then, be serious. Like niost capa- 
 ble women, Mary distrusted all nursing except her 
 own. She feared gravely for the bachelor at the 
 mercy of hirelings. In the course of the morning 
 she departed for Paris, to catch the afternoon boat- 
 train for England. She went alone. The matter 
 was urgent; she must satisfy herself about Johnnie 
 that very day. She was regretting now that she 
 had exiled him from Fontainebleau. Why had she 
 exiled him? She did not know. Nobody could 
 discover a logical reason. Perhaps if she had not 
 exiled him he would not have fallen ill. 
 
 374 
 
THE ATTITUDE 
 
 I was left in charge of Edith. This infinitely pre- 
 cious possession was confided to me: supreme flat- 
 tery. Mary did not think that it would be worth 
 while coming back. I was to conclude the tenancy 
 of the house and vacate it in order, and bring the 
 multifarious luggage, the French nurse, and Edith 
 safely to London. Mary's departure seemed to 
 happen in a moment, as her departure from Lon- 
 don had happened. Indeed, since her passion for 
 Johnnie had fully seized her, Mary was a different 
 woman; often girlish, even infantile, and noticeably 
 precipitate in her actions. 
 
 The intimacy between Edith and me increased 
 greatly during the first twenty-four hours of Mary's 
 absence. Edith was sad; but she made it clear by 
 gestures and tones that I was not held to blame for 
 her sadness. She desired to return home without 
 delay. I consented. In any event I should have 
 left within a week We traveled to Paris, after tre- 
 mendous and intricate preparations, on a wet after- 
 noon. My intention was to pass the night there 
 and proceed to London the next day. At the Hotel 
 Meurice she and her nurse had two rooms, com- 
 municating. It was the first time that Edith had 
 ever had the exclusive use of a room. She received 
 me in it, poHtely curbing her self-importance. She 
 was much older than I was. 
 
 375 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " Uncle," she said, after cautiously shutting the 
 door leading to the other room, " why should 
 mother go to Captain Hulse because he's ill, and 
 leave me here? Supposing I was ill? " 
 
 Evidently the question was overripe in her mind. 
 
 " Well," I replied, " you aren't ill, and you 
 mustn't be. Don't forget it's your mother's birth- 
 day to-morrow. You must be well for that." 
 
 "Is it? " she exclaimed. "When shall we get 
 home? " 
 
 " Oh! about six o'clock." 
 
 " To-morrow night? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And will mother be at home or will she be with 
 Captain Hulse? " 
 
 " I hope she'll be at home. I'm going to write 
 this minute. But if Captain Hulse was very 
 ill " 
 
 " You mean she won't be at home." 
 
 I had not definitely promised Mary to give Edith 
 an " idea " of what was in store for her, but I had 
 not refused to do so. If the thing was to be done 
 it ought to be done before she saw her mothef 
 again, and time was short now. 
 
 " Suppose," I blurted out, " suppose your 
 mother were to decide that it would be nice for you 
 to have a new father, and — it was Captain Hulse? 
 
 376 
 
THE ATTITUDE 
 
 You do like him, you know. And he's a great 
 friend of mine. I say, suppose she were to de- 
 cide." 
 
 She gazed at me in silence. She asked for no 
 further light. She put no babyish questions. Then 
 the curves of her lips began to change; her eyes 
 filled, and she burst into sobbing. The nurse 
 opened the door from the other room. I waved 
 the woman away, and took Edith in my arms and 
 sat down with her. She was certainly the victim of 
 the circumstances of this affair. Johnnie was to be 
 introduced into her home; he was to be forcibly 
 thrust upon her, upsetting the delicate balance of 
 her existence. It was she who would have to ad- 
 just herself. For years and years she would be com- 
 pelled to suflfer the influences of Johnnie's violent 
 individuality. They might be good for her; they 
 would assuredly be stimulative. But that was not 
 the point. The point was that she had no choice in 
 the matter. Various risks threatened her. At best 
 she was to lose the monopoly of her mother. And 
 she could only submit. 
 
 I tried to comfort her. Then I said: 
 
 " Come! If you go on like this, what will your 
 mother do? " 
 
 " Let me get my handkerchief," she said, and 
 slid down. " I'm not crying about — about that. 
 
 377 
 
THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I'm very glad — about that." She wiped her eyes, 
 sobbing occasionally. " I'm only crying because 
 it's mother's birthday to-morrow and I shan't see 
 her till night, and perhaps I shan't see her at all. 
 And I want to see her in the morning." 
 
 I quite believed that she had persuaded herself 
 that herein was the sole cause of her grief. 
 
 " Pity, isn't it? " I said. " But I can promise 
 you you shall see her when we do get to London." 
 
 " Can't we go to-night. When's the next train? " 
 
 " It's not like going to Harrow," I said. 
 " There aren't trains every half hour." 
 
 " Aren't there? " 
 
 " No! And the afternoon train's gone." 
 
 " When's the next? " 
 
 " The next is the night train. You'd be travel- 
 ing all night." 
 
 " But when should we get to London? " 
 
 " Before six o'clock in the morning." 
 
 " Oh, uncle! " she exclaimed, enraptured; an ap- 
 peal in her eyes. 
 
 I had engaged the rooms at the hotel, and I was 
 aware that Mary would not have countenanced the 
 wild project of a night journey for Edith. But I 
 would not check that fine impulse of Edith's to- 
 ward her mother; I could appreciate her subtle dis- 
 tinction between greeting her mother in the fresh 
 
 378 
 
THE ATTITUDE 
 
 morning of her mother's birthday and greeting her 
 only at its close. 
 
 Thus at daybreak we were nearing England. 
 The voyage had begun in fair weather and was 
 ending as a storm rose; but Edith, wrapped from 
 head to foot in a rug, slept on a bench. The boat 
 swirled on a heaving, slaty sea in the dusk. In the 
 corners of the sky hung a few expiring stars that 
 the ragged clouds had not covered away. And 
 there were the pale cliffs, jutting pitifully up out of 
 the menacing Atlantic. The boat approached them 
 with rebellious bows that lifted and fell and swerved 
 and were constantly corrected by the watchful 
 rudder. The lantern on her mast was as weak as 
 the stars. From the cliffs there ran out a thin, 
 dark reef, finished with another expiring light, and 
 we ran toward this reef. One felt that it was in- 
 deed an island which we were nearing; scarcely 
 even an island, but something- insecurely anchored 
 amid the eternal threatenings of the ocean, 
 something round which the tempests were never 
 still. We sidled perilously up to the reef — a tongue 
 of stone and wood pushed forth audaciously into 
 the sea to save us. A cord, a mere cord, was 
 thrown to us, and we clung to the shaking reef. 
 The island had offered us such shelter as it could. 
 Islanders came aboard to enhearten us in the windy 
 
 85 m 
 
THE • GLIMPSE 
 
 and fatigued dawn. I picked up Edith and, the 
 nurse following, carried her across a plank, and 
 along the narrow soaking reef, balancing amid 
 gusts. And islanders with fragments of white chalk 
 put rough mystical marks upon our goods so that 
 we might pass. Behind a small, oblong aperture 
 a wan girl with flufify hair stood at a tiny counter to 
 offer us beer in thick glasses and tea and cofifee in 
 cups of granite, and hunks of bread. It was the 
 gate of an empire. It was the welcome of the 
 greatest empire. I yawned and smiled and yawned. 
 I, too, was an islander. 
 
 And when we rolled across the floor of roofs into 
 a London that was not yet awake I still had the 
 sensation of being on an island insecurely anchored 
 in a great sea. We were all huddled together on 
 that bit of turf that raised its breast from the sea 
 to encounter the winds ; and we were doing what we 
 could; and we called the episode life. We called 
 it life, this recurring moment of captivity between 
 vast freedom. . . . Differences of class, of lot — 
 what were they in the immense perspective? We 
 were all one. The eager acuteness of my sympa- 
 thetic understanding quickened my blood and made 
 me forget fatigue. Mary was at the station. She 
 had been up all night, but Johnnie was better. She 
 expressed surprise at my vigor. I watched the 
 
 380 
 
THE ATTITUDE 
 
 meeting of mother and child with joy. I compre- 
 hended them, in all the secret folds of their emo- 
 tion. I succeeded in that because I wanted to suc- 
 ceed, because my joy was to pour myself into them 
 and spiritually coalesce with them. Such was my 
 attitude. I did not know what my activities would 
 be during the remaining years of the episode called 
 hfe, but I knew that by an intense and continual 
 cultivation of this attitude toward all my fellows in 
 the episode, I should avoid unhappiness. In such 
 preparation, I could possess myself in peace until 
 the prison broke once more. Nothing else, beside 
 the perfecting of this attitude had importance. I 
 was alone. But I had seen God. 
 
 a) 
 
 THE END