you have never
wanted anything like that. I went straight to her.

But here I come to untellable things. There is no describing the reality
of love. The shapes of things are nothing, the actual happenings are
nothing, except that somehow there falls a light upon them and a wonder.
Of how we met, and the thrill of the adventure, the curious bright sense
of defiance, the joy of having dared, I can't tell--I can but hint of
just one aspect, of what an amazing LARK--it's the only word--it seemed
to us. The beauty which was the essence of it, which justifies it so far
as it will bear justification, eludes statement.

What can a record of contrived meetings, of sundering difficulties
evaded and overcome, signify here? Or what can it convey to say that
one looked deep into two dear, steadfast eyes, or felt a heart throb
and beat, or gripped soft hair softly in a trembling hand? Robbed of
encompassing love, these things are of no more value than the taste of
good wine or the sight of good pictures, or the hearing of music,--just
sensuality and no more. No one can tell love--we can only tell the gross
facts of love and its consequences. Given love--given mutuality, and one
has effected a supreme synthesis and come to a new level of life--but
only those who know can know. This business has brought me more
bitterness and sorrow than I had ever expected to bear, but even now
I will not say that I regret that wilful home-coming altogether. We
loved--to the uttermost. Neither of us could have loved any one else
as we did and do love one another. It was ours, that beauty; it existed
only between us when we were close together, for no one in the world
ever to know save ourselves.

My return to the office sticks out in my memory with an extreme
vividness, because of the wild eagle of pride that screamed within me.
It was Tuesday morning, and though not a soul in London knew of it yet
except Isabel, I had been back in England a week. I came in upon Britten
and stood in the doorway.

"GOD!" he said at the sight of me.

"I'm back," I said.

He looked at my excited face with those red-brown eyes of his. Silently
I defied him to speak his mind.

"Where did you turn back?" he said at last.

6

I had to tell what were, so far as I can remember my first positive lies
to Margaret in explaining that return. I had written to her from Chicago
and again from New York, saying that I felt I ought to be on the spot
in England for the