ean to say that I am like an innocent shepherd in
one of those interminable stories of the eighteenth century. But I don't
throw the word love about indiscriminately. It may be all true about the
sea; but some people would say that they love sausages."

"You are horrible."

"I am surprised."

"I mean your choice of words."

"And you have never uttered a word yet that didn't change into a pearl as
it dropped from your lips. At least not before me."

She glanced down deliberately and said, "This is better. But I don't see
any of them on the floor."

"It's you who are horrible in the implications of your language. Don't
see any on the floor! Haven't I caught up and treasured them all in my
heart? I am not the animal from which sausages are made."

She looked at me suavely and then with the sweetest possible smile
breathed out the word: "No."

And we both laughed very loud. O! days of innocence! On this occasion
we parted from each other on a light-hearted note. But already I had
acquired the conviction that there was nothing more lovable in the world
than that woman; nothing more life-giving, inspiring, and illuminating
than the emanation of her charm. I meant it absolutely--not excepting
the light of the sun.

From this there was only one step further to take. The step into a
conscious surrender; the open perception that this charm, warming like a
flame, was also all-revealing like a great light; giving new depth to
shades, new brilliance to colours, an amazing vividness to all sensations
and vitality to all thoughts: so that all that had been lived before
seemed to have been lived in a drab world and with a languid pulse.

A great revelation this. I don't mean to say it was soul-shaking. The
soul was already a captive before doubt, anguish, or dismay could touch
its surrender and its exaltation. But all the same the revelation turned
many things into dust; and, amongst others, the sense of the careless
freedom of my life. If that life ever had any purpose or any aim outside
itself I would have said that it threw a shadow across its path. But it
hadn't. There had been no path. But there was a shadow, the inseparable
companion of all light. No illumination can sweep all mystery out of the
world. After the departed darkness the shadows remain, more mysterious
because as if more enduring; and one feels a dread of them from which one
was free before. What if they were to be victorious at the l