as rather that my heart had grown
so large that no man could fill it! I felt within me an immense,
incomprehensible capacity for love, and the whole world with all its
contents seemed totally, even absurdly, inadequate to satisfy this
great capacity. I suffered over it without understanding it.

IX

I had a garden full of old-fashioned flowers, surrounded by high
walls with thatch. As I grew in my heart more and more away from
the world, I worked more in the garden, and whilst I worked I
thought mostly about God--God so far away and hidden, and yet so
near my heart.

There were many different song-birds in the garden, and one robin. I
loved the robin best of all. His song was not so beautiful as the
blackbird's or so mellow as the thrush's; but they hid and ran away
from me, whilst the robin sought me out and stayed with me and
sang me, all to myself, a little, tiny, gentle song of which I never
grew tired. If I stayed quite still, he came so close he almost touched
me; but if I moved towards him, he flew away in a great fright.

It seemed to me I was like that robin, and I wanted to come close,
close to the feet of God. But He would not let me find Him. He
would not make me any sign. He would not let me feel I knew Him.
Did He in His wisdom know that if He showed Himself too openly I
should go mad with fear or joy? I could not tell. But every day as the
robin sang to me in the garden I sang to God a little gentle song out
of my heart--a song to the hidden God Who called me, and when I
answered Him would not be found, and, still remaining hidden,
called and called till I was dumb with the pain and wonder of this
mystery.

Then suddenly came the Great War. My husband was amongst the
first to have to go. All my love for him which I had thought to be
fading now rose up again to its full strength: it was no mere weakly
sentiment, but a powerful type of human love which had been able
to carry me through fifteen years of married life without one hour of
quarrelling; its roots were deep into my heart and mind: the very
strength and perfection of it but made of it a greater instrument for
torture. Why should this most beautiful of all human emotions carry
with it so heavy a penalty, for which no remedy appeared to exist? It
had not then been made clear to me that all human loves must first
be offered up and ascend into the love of God: then only are they
freed from this Pain-Tax. God must first be All in All to us before