ken, each with civilisations
and histories and hopes and fears of their own. A stupendous, an
overwhelming thought! And yet, in the midst of it, here was I myself, a
little consciousness sharply divided from it all, permitted to be a
spectator, a partaker of the intolerable and gigantic mystery, and yet
so strangely made that the whole of that vast and prodigious complexity
of life and law counted for less to me than the touch of weariness that
hung, after my long vigil, over limbs and brain. The faculty, the
godlike power of knowing and imagining, all actually less to me than my
own tiny and fragile sensations. Such moods as these are strange
things, because they bring with them so intense a desire to know, to
perceive, and yet paralyse one with the horror of the darkness in which
one moves. One cannot conceive why it is that one is given the power of
realising the multiplicity of creation, and yet at the same time left
so wholly ignorant of its significance. One longs to leap into the arms
of God, to catch some whisper of His voice; and at the same time there
falls the shadow of the prison-house; one is driven relentlessly back
upon the old limited life, the duties, the labours, the round of meals
and sleep, the tiny relations with others as ignorant as ourselves,
and, still worse, with the petty spirits who have a complacent
explanation of it all. Even over love itself the shadow falls. I am as
near to my own dear and true Maud as it is possible to be; but I can
tell her nothing of the mystery, and she can tell me nothing. We are
allowed for a time to draw close to each other, to whisper to each
other our hopes and fears; but at any moment we can be separated. The
children, Alec and Maggie, dearer to me--I can say it honestly--than
life itself, to whom we have given being, whose voices I hear as I
write, what of them? They are each of them alone, though they hardly
know it yet. The little unnamed son, who opened his eyes upon the world
six years ago, to close them in a few hours, where and what is he now?
Is he somewhere, anywhere? Does he know of the joy and sorrow he has
brought into our lives? I would fain believe it . . . these are
profitless thoughts, of one staring into the abyss. Somehow these
bright weeks have been to me a dreary time. I am well in health;
nothing ails me. It is six months since my last book was published, and
I have taken a deliberate holiday; but always before, my mind, the
strain of a book