ent that the city was put into my hands.

July 18.

... I bathed on the dunes on Wonder Island. The sun set tonight
sacramentally just as it set that night at ---- when I failed to
speak. Never had I felt stronger, but something held me back from
telling him how the dearest wish of my life was that he should
participate in the Holy Eucharist. The flame was in my hands to lay
upon his heart, but something bade me wait. I distrusted it, and asked
him to walk with me on the shore. The thunder of the tide and the moon
were too strong. Why could I not have told him? We were silent for
hours while his heart lay with the _Titanic_, and even his little
daughter was quiet in the room.

July 19.

The stars are the dust rubbed off from human souls. "Dust unto dust
thou shalt return." At the last judgment, they will fly together in an
angelic hosting, and clothe once more the souls which moved in them,
and our souls will rule their songs. Human suffering is the friction
of angels making stars. ... I know now that the end of one's forty
days is not complete knowledge, but only a clear indication of the
road. The joy is in that, and also the sorrow. It is the direction
given to the will, orders to be so carefully obeyed. This is the
greatest discovery of all. Words do not reveal it. It is absolutely
prosaic, though it is eternal beauty. But what I have written does not
reflect it even faintly as it seems to me. Read Hello this afternoon.
The freedom of the dunes this morning seemed to extend more than is
usual. Later I read from Plato's "Symposium."

July 20.

... The proverbial symbol of impermanence is writing upon sand. What
could be more gloriously permanent? To have one's message spelled out
by singing planets, to write upon the stars. It is so that our songs
have immortality. "Verba scripta manent" takes on a majestic
significance. Are not joy and sadness the same? The only difference is
one of rapidity. Sadness is made up of the long, slow, majestic chords
of the song. It seems to me that when a wheel seems to cease motion,
and finally attains a state of motionlessness, it is perhaps merely
turning into a terrible speed which we cannot perceive. It is the
turning of an hour-glass. When I am dead, I wish only my faults to be
chronicled, for these alone have any value for the world. I have
dreamt always of cycles of infinities. As a decimal always tends by
evolution towards a number, so also we evolve toward an inf