E NEW WORLD

CHAPTER THE FIRST

LOVE AFTER THE CHANGE

Section 1

So far I have said nothing of Nettie. I have departed widely from
my individual story. I have tried to give you the effect of the
change in relation to the general framework of human life, its
effect of swift, magnificent dawn, of an overpowering letting in
and inundation of light, and the spirit of living. In my memory all
my life before the Change has the quality of a dark passage, with
the dimmest side gleams of beauty that come and go. The rest is dull
pain and darkness. Then suddenly the walls, the bitter confines,
are smitten and vanish, and I walk, blinded, perplexed, and yet
rejoicing, in this sweet, beautiful world, in its fair incessant
variety, its satisfaction, its opportunities, exultant in this glorious
gift of life. Had I the power of music I would make a world-wide
motif swell and amplify, gather to itself this theme and that, and
rise at last to sheer ecstasy of triumph and rejoicing. It should
be all sound, all pride, all the hope of outsetting in the morning
brightness, all the glee of unexpected happenings, all the gladness
of painful effort suddenly come to its reward; it should be like
blossoms new opened and the happy play of children, like tearful,
happy mothers holding their first-born, like cities building to
the sound of music, and great ships, all hung with flags and wine
bespattered, gliding down through cheering multitudes to their first
meeting with the sea. Through it all should march Hope, confident
Hope, radiant and invincible, until at last it would be the triumph
march of Hope the conqueror, coming with trumpetings and banners
through the wide-flung gates of the world.

And then out of that luminous haze of gladness comes Nettie,
transfigured.

So she came again to me--amazing, a thing incredibly forgotten.

She comes back, and Verrall is in her company. She comes back
into my memories now, just as she came back then, rather quaintly
at first--at first not seen very clearly, a little distorted by
intervening things, seen with a doubt, as I saw her through the
slightly discolored panes of crinkled glass in the window of the
Menton post-office and grocer's shop. It was on the second day
after the Change, and I had been sending telegrams for Melmount,
who was making arrangements for his departure for Downing Street.
I saw the two of them at first as small, flawed figures. The glass
made them seem curve