ng had come from a spiritual distance so
unthinkable and immeasurable, that the very word distance meant
little.

Of the Presence itself and its mode she could use nothing better than
metaphors. But those to whom she spoke were given to understand that
it was not this or that faculty of her being that, so to speak, pushed
against it; but that her entire being was saturated so entirely, that
it was but just possible to distinguish her inmost self from it. The
understanding no longer moved; the emotions no longer rebelled; memory
simply ceased. Yet through the worst there remained one minute,
infinitesimally small spark of identity that maintained "I am I; and I
am not that." There was no analysis or consideration; scarcely even a
sense of disgust. In fact for a while there was a period when to that
tiny spot of identity it appeared that it would be an incalculable
relief to cease from striving, and to let self itself be merged in
that Personality so amazingly strong and compelling, that had
precipitated itself upon the rest.... Relief? Certainly. For though
emotion as most men know it was crushed out--that emotion stirred by
human love or hatred--there remained an instinct which strove, which,
by one long continuous tension, maintained itself in being.

For the malignity of the thing was overwhelming. It was not mere
pressure; it had a character of its own for which the girl afterwards
had no words. She could only say that, so far from being negation, or
emptiness, or non-being, it had an air, hot as flame, black as pitch,
and hard as iron.

That then was the situation for a time which she could only afterwards
reckon by guesswork; there was no development or movement--no
measurable incidents; there was but the state that remained poised;
below all those comparatively superficial faculties with which men in
general carry on their affairs--that state in which two Personalities
faced one another, welded together in a grip that lay on the very
brink of fusion....

_Chapter XVIII_

I

The cocks were crowing from the yards behind the village when Maggie
opened her eyes, clear shrill music, answered from the hill as by
their echoes, and the yews outside were alive with the dawn-chirping
of the sparrows.

She lay there quite quietly, watching under her tired eyelids, through
the still unshuttered windows, the splendid glow, seen behind the
twisted stems in front and the slender fairy forest of birches on the