y
moment, I felt, it must take tangible form, betray itself in visible
movement of some sort, break possibly into audible sound of actual
speech. It would not have surprised me--more, it would have been natural
almost--had I felt a touch upon my hands and lips, or caught the murmur
of spoken words against my ear.

Yet from such direct revelation I shrank involuntarily and by instinct.
I could not have borne it then. I had the feeling that it must mar and
defile a wonder already great enough; there would have lain in it, too,
a betrayal of the commonplace, as of something which I could not
possibly hold for true. I must have distrusted my own senses even, for
the beauty that cleft me open dealt directly with the soul alone,
leaving the senses wholly disengaged. The Presence was not answerable to
any lesser recognition.

Thus I shrank and turned away, facing the familiar garden and the "wet
bird-haunted English lawn," a spiritual tenderness in me still dreading
that I might see or hear or feel, destroying thus the reality of my
experience. Yet there was, thank God, no speech, no touch, no movement,
other than the shiver of the birches, the breath of air against my
cheek, the droop and bending of the nearer pine boughs. There was no
audible or visible expression; I saw no figure breast-high in the
bracken. Yet sound there was, a moment later. For, as I turned away, a
bird upon a larch twig overhead burst into sudden and exultant song.

IX

NOW, do not be alarmed lest I shall attempt to describe a list of
fanciful unrealities that borrowed life from a passing emotion
merely; the emotion was permanent, the results enduring. Please
believe the honest statement that, with the singing of that bird, the
pent-up stress in me became measurably articulate. Some bird in my
heart, long caged, rang out in answering inner song.

It is also true, I think, that there were no words in me at the
moment, and certainly no desire for speech. Had a companion been with
me, I should probably have merely lit my pipe and smoked in silence;
if I spoke at all, I should have made some commonplace remark: "It's
late; we must be going in to dress for dinner...." As it was,
however, the emotion in me, answering the singing of the bird, became,
as I said, measurably articulate. I give you simple facts, as though
this were my monthly Report to the Foreign Office in days gone by. I
spoke no word aloud, of course. It was rather that my feelings fo