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 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
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 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 
 IA* ' 

 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 NOVELS 
 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 
 ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 LEONORA 
 
 A GREAT MAN 
 
 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE 
 
 WHOM GOD HATH JOINED 
 
 BURIED ALIVE 
 
 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 FANTASIAS 
 
 THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL 
 
 THE GATES OF WRATH 
 
 TERESA OF WATLING STREET 
 
 THE LOOT OF CITIES 
 
 HUGO 
 
 THE GHOST 
 
 THE CITY OF PLEASURE 
 
 SHOUT STORIES 
 
 TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 BELLES-LETTRES 
 
 JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN 
 
 FAME AND FICTION 
 
 HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR 
 
 THE REASONABLE LIFE 
 
 HOW TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS 
 
 A DAY 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 LITERARY TASTE 
 
 DRAMA 
 
 POLITE FARCES 
 
 CUPID AND COMMONSENSE 
 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS 
 
 (IN COLLABORATION WITH EDEN PHILLPOTTs) 
 
 THE SINEWS OF WAR: A Romance 
 THE STATUE : A Romance
 
 THE GLIMPSE
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 AN ADVENTURE OF THE SOUL 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 LONDON 
 CHAPMAN & HALL, Ltd. 
 
 1909
 
 ) 
 
 j 
 
 CONTENTS 
 BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Concert i 
 
 II. The Public 6 
 
 III. A Final Perfection . . . 10 
 
 IV. Bond Street .... . . 14 
 
 V. The Malady l8 
 
 VI. The Retreat 26 
 
 VII. Birth and Death of Love .... 35 
 
 VIII. On Inez 51 
 
 IX. The Dinner 59 
 
 X. The Departure 7° 
 
 XI. The Thunderclap 83 
 
 XII. In the Study ... 93 
 
 XIII. The Doctor 106 
 
 XIV. The Night 115 
 
 XV. Towards Oblivion 122 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 XVI. Awaking 128 
 
 XVII. Sounds of Night ... . . 138 
 
 XVIII. Marion's Thoughts 144 
 
 727Cr
 
 VI 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Drama 153 
 
 The Cost of Grief 166 
 
 Freedom .172 
 
 The Woman 174 
 
 The Palace 178 
 
 Culmination 183 
 
 The Death of Desire . . . .188 
 
 Birth 193 
 
 The Past . 200 
 
 The Glimpse .... . 209 
 
 Accident 221 
 
 BOOK III 
 
 Return 230 
 
 The Mystery . . ... 241 
 
 The Bedside 253 
 
 The Ceremony 262 
 
 Disturbance 269 
 
 To the Grave 281 
 
 Marion 290 
 
 Edith 298 
 
 Johnnie's Return 315 
 
 The Lover and the Mother . . . 324 
 
 The Disappearance 335 
 
 At Dark 347 
 
 The Attitude 358 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 XIX. 
 
 XX. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 XXX. 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 XXXII. 
 
 XXXIII. 
 
 XXXIV. 
 
 XXXV. 
 
 XXXVI. 
 
 XXXVII. 
 
 XXXVIII. 
 
 XXXIX. 
 
 XL. 
 
 XLI. 
 
 XLII.
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CONCERT 
 
 I PASSED from the street between two lackeys who 
 might have been the lackeys of Marie Antoinette 
 into the curtained and velvety calm of those vast 
 suites which a merchant designed in order to flatter 
 the lust of eyes like mine. Plush on the wide silent 
 floors, Indian-red tapestry on the walls, and through 
 each draped doorway confusing and spacious vistas. 
 The woodwork, the bronze fittings, the crystal 
 stalactites, the moulded plaster — all showed curious, 
 elaborate craftsmanship. Hundreds of artisans in 
 soiled smocks must have laboured for months with 
 dirty, offensive hands to produce that sedate splen- 
 dour. But they were all gone, all hurried out of 
 sight ; and of the under-world only a gloved servility 
 
 i B
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 in immaculate hose had been retained. In spite of 
 yourself you had the illusion that some powerful 
 wand must have waved the place into sudden and 
 complete existence. A retreat for the dilettante, a 
 refuge where he might be secure from the disconcert- 
 ing aggression of inharmonious phenomena! A 
 temple ! 
 
 A turnstile clicked me into the central hall, under 
 whose dome the concert had been arranged. Opaline 
 stuffs, ballooning downwards from the dome, changed 
 the sunlight into silver. Hung about the large room 
 were forty paintings by Charles Conder, which I had 
 already seen. A Conder exhibition had closed on 
 the previous day. It was an exquisitely luxurious 
 idea: abasing those pictures, each a marvel of in- 
 tricate and lovely fancy, to be the background of 
 music. Conceive, in the expectant hush, the gleaming 
 Bechstein piano with its lid pointing upwards, the 
 rows of gilt chairs empty or occupied, the border of 
 floor, and then the ring of Charles Conder's women 
 voluptuously brooding in their weak but eternal 
 beauty amid impossible landscapes of ivory, lavender 
 and rose. 
 
 A pianist began to play the "Miroirs" of Ravel. 
 (It was this name, on the programme of a concert of 
 modern French music, which had drawn me from the 
 pavement of Bond Street into the Rutland Galleries.) 
 The first of the 'mirrors' in which Ravel reflected
 
 THE CONCERT 3 
 
 the extreme originality of his sensations was called 
 " Night-moths." Before these strange insects had 
 been flitting enigmatically about the room for even 
 a couple of minutes they seemed to have chosen a 
 special victim in the person of an old man with a 
 small, thin face and a short white beard who sat near 
 to me. He shrugged his shoulders ; he emitted in- 
 articulate scorn through his nose. His resentment 
 then forced itself into words. He muttered : 
 
 " Morbid ! " 
 
 And later, in a loud tone that attracted atten- 
 tion : 
 
 " Ridiculous ! What next, I wonder ! " 
 
 And as the night-moths fluttered to rest amid 
 timid applause, he rose as if in a paroxysm of holy 
 anger, snatched his hat from under the gilt chair, and 
 strode out, snorting protests. People turned to gaze 
 at him an instant, mildly and politely shocked that a 
 human being should exhibit so much feeling about 
 naught. But I liked that old man, and sympathised 
 with him, because he had wandered with brave 
 curiosity into the wrong generation. Moreover, he 
 had made me sure that Ravel was saying something 
 powerful and beautiful in its originality. Only real 
 power and beauty could have so quickly flung that 
 honest, obstinate old man into the street. He would 
 have laughed easily at pretences and held his 
 ground.
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 "Mournful Birds," "A Bark on the Ocean," 
 " The Valley of Bells " : these were names of other 
 of the 'mirrors.' What clever things might be 
 written in comparing, for instance, Ravel's birds with 
 the 'plaintive warblers' of Frangois Couperin, two 
 centuries earlier! But I am not now composing 
 another musical treatise. The tragic grief of the 
 birds, the febrile and yet majestic furrowing of that 
 singular bark, the evasive sweetness of bells in a 
 most sinister valley, — yes, I could describe these 
 matters ; but to no end save the extension of my 
 own personality. Music cannot be said. One art 
 cannot be translated into another. All that I can 
 say is that I was aware of another step, in the art of 
 music, towards the ultimate realism, the ultimate con- 
 quest of a refractory medium. I had heard music as 
 beautiful. I had heard music which to me was more 
 beautiful. But I had never heard music in which 
 the twelve unchangeable semitones of the octave — 
 sole material of all our music — were so tenderly, so 
 harshly, so cruelly, so brilliantly teased, cajoled, and 
 whipped into the subtle curves of an exceedingly 
 complex temperament. My wonder was, and the 
 wonder of every musician would be : " How did he 
 manage to write it down ? How did he express it in 
 notes?" For it appeared to be indivisible into its 
 constituent notes. He had carried musical expres- 
 sion further than anybody had carried it. He had
 
 THE CONCERT 
 
 done that. Wagner, one used to hear, had dealt 
 music such a blow that she must lie henceforward 
 motionless for ever. So she had lain, stunned, until 
 Debussy came and revived her by persuading her 
 that Wagner was a fable and had never lived. 
 Debussy had created a new beauty, and here was 
 Ravel, swift on his heels, creating still another and 
 a newer beauty, communicating a thrill stranger than 
 any thrill ! I exulted in this birth. I exulted in the 
 acute distinction, the aristocratic audacity, the baffling 
 obscurity of this ruthless and soft music. I thought 
 how fine and glorious it was to hear these sounds 
 now for the first time heard in London. I could 
 have cried angrily to the audience : " Shout, for the 
 immortal spirit of beauty has passed into another 
 incarnation, and you before all others in this city 
 have witnessed the advent ! "
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE PUBLIC 
 
 But the applause at the end of the suite of pieces 
 was even fainter than it had been after the first 
 number. The proudly demure minister of beauty 
 rose from the piano and bowed to a tremulous and 
 feeble clapping which expired at once as though 
 afraid even of itself. And the pianist sat down 
 quickly. I did not applaud, because I never do 
 applaud, my feelings not being readily expressible 
 in violent movements of my hands and feet. More- 
 over, even if I had had time to decide to protest by 
 noise against the general indifference, the protest 
 would have been worse than useless, for it would 
 have given emphasis to that awful tepidity. After 
 the lovely confusing sound of the piano, and the 
 little April shower of perfunctory clapping, there 
 was silence. There was almost stillness. People 
 seemed afraid even to whisper to each other lest in 
 the intimacy of the domed room everybody might 
 overhear. We sat glum and self-conscious, waiting. 
 My lips curled savagely. The public had failed 
 
 6
 
 THE PUBLIC 
 
 again. The public had displayed again its incurable 
 qualities of dullness, unreceptiveness, suspiciousness, 
 and fright. (And yet this was a picked public, a 
 choice handful ! No common public would have put 
 itself to the trouble of coming to listen to music 
 clearly labelled modern, by composers of whom it 
 had scarcely heard. I was, indeed, among persons 
 who possessed in some degree the divine gift of 
 curiosity.) Oh ! the terrible unresponsive inertia of 
 the well-intentioned and faithful Anglo-Saxon public ! 
 Oh ! incomparably blind and deaf ! The old fight 
 would have to begin afresh, and it would have to 
 pass through all the usual stages. And then, when 
 it was done and the vanquished public was ecstatically 
 kissing the feet of its conqueror, lo ! the battle would 
 recommence yet again. My lips curled with the 
 intensity of disgust. I preferred the snorting old man 
 who would not tolerate the music at all to this prim 
 apathy. The immense melancholy which for a year 
 past had been creeping over me seemed suddenly to 
 lay its heavy folds closer upon me. My exultation 
 in the genius of the music remained, but it was 
 transformed into something grim and bitter. 
 
 A whispering occurred among the performers at 
 the end of the room. The concert was conducted 
 with a certain informality, and the artistes instead of 
 going in and out s,at at the back, like a group of 
 priests. Evidently, now, a contretemps of some kind
 
 8 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 had arisen. I saw the solo pianist sitting by himself, 
 and nervously stroking his pointed French beard. 
 I got up from my chair at the end of a row and 
 went to him and bluntly asked him for the name 
 of the publisher of the music which he had just 
 played. I could easily have obtained the information 
 otherwise, but perhaps my soul was forcing me to 
 express in some strange, abrupt, hard English way 
 my sympathy with his mission in that place. 
 
 " Pardon me," he replied nervously in a low 
 tone, and with a strong foreign accent. " Have I the 
 honour of speaking to Mr. Morrice Loring ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said stiffly. 
 
 He bowed. So did I. Then he picked up a piece 
 of music from the next chair, scribbled on it feverishly 
 with a fountain pen, and handed it to me in a sort 
 of religious fervour. It was the " Miroirs " of Ravel, 
 with a dedication to myself from Ravel's interpreter. 
 
 " Deign to accept," he murmured. 
 
 I could not argue, for the delay in the concert, 
 whatever it was, had ended, and a young woman was 
 rising to sing. I thanked my donor as adequately 
 as I could in the time and circumstances, and stole 
 back to my seat. Only two years ago, how such 
 a recognition, especially from a foreigner, would have 
 touched and delighted me ! Five years ago I should 
 almost have regarded it as the crown of a career. 
 But now it did not in the least move me. I thought
 
 THE PUBLIC 
 
 the man's eagerness rather childish, rather pitiful, 
 rather absurd. I felt that his sense of values was 
 wrong, and that he knew more of the piano than of 
 life. I did not even puzzle my head to conjecture 
 how he had come to be aware of my identity.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 A FINAL PERFECTION 
 
 The young woman was an American, advertised as 
 a pupil of Jean de Reszke. She seemed to be a 
 highly finished article, as she stood there, expectantly 
 smiling, with her back to the piano and her arms 
 thrust somewhat behind, widely aslant, so that the 
 curved fingers rested on the piano. Such a pose 
 must have been carefully thought out and long 
 practised, to the least detail. Her frock and hat, 
 her gloves, the line of her neck-chain, had all been 
 the subject of deep consideration. She had an 
 agreeable platform voice, mezzo-soprano, which had 
 been admirably trained and developed, and a perfect 
 French accent. My mind, as I listened to her, dwelt 
 on the ten thousand hours during which her voice 
 must have run up and down on scales, in warm 
 months and in cold months, always the same, ex- 
 asperating the neighbour in the flat above or the 
 flat below : and on the weariness of the piano and 
 of the accompanist, and on the recurrent excitation 
 of lesson-days ; and on the intrigues and schemes 
 
 10
 
 A FINAL PERFECTION n 
 
 for success ; and on the visits to dressmakers and 
 modistes and coiffeurs, and the continual pathetic 
 effort to stretch money a little further than money 
 will in fact stretch ; and again on the schemes, and 
 again the schemes ; and the absurd, wild hopes ; and 
 the days of discouragement. In that moment she 
 was at fruition. It was to be able to stand up grace- 
 ful and elegant there, and pour pretty sounds from 
 the vase of her body, that she had toiled upon herself, 
 and others had toiled upon her, for a decade and 
 perhaps more. Five minutes, and she had done ! 
 Interminable cultivation, endless effort, for five 
 minutes of formal display ! A few vibrations, a 
 glance, a smile, a gesture ; and she had done all that 
 she could do. Once a week, once a month, possibly 
 less often, she lived for five minutes ! 
 
 And it was all useless. She sang a foolish song 
 of Gustave Charpentier's — a song born dead — and 
 she sang it sentimentally ; she liked the song, 
 bathing in its sickly vapours. She had learnt every- 
 thing that could be taught, and nothing that was 
 worth learning without the original gift which she 
 did not possess. This fruition of hers was bad ; it 
 was unrighteous. Those neighbours had been ex- 
 asperated for worse than naught during all those 
 long years. And she did not know ; she never 
 would know. She stood there in her simple guile, 
 and in her expert accomplishment, wistfully trusting
 
 i2 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 in the efficacy of her power. In that she was justified. 
 Before the last chords of the accompaniment had 
 been played the audience, impatient to express 
 its delight, frothed into an elegant but sincere 
 applause. 
 
 " Sweet ! " One heard. 
 
 And it was ; too sweet. 
 
 Her eyes sparkled as she bowed. For such 
 instants as this she existed. Her existence was a 
 series of ascents to, and descents from, such instants 
 as this. She dreamed, I knew, of more brilliant 
 successes. But she would never have them. She 
 lacked temperament. She was merely the accidental 
 possessor of a small, agreeable, highly-trained mezzo- 
 soprano voice. On a stage, in a great hall, with an 
 orchestra, she would be extinguished. 
 
 I shrank from the rest of the programme, and 
 departed, gloomy, but still grimly exultant about 
 the art of Ravel, the impression of whose music I 
 wished to preserve unmingled with any other im- 
 pressions. Already the Charpentier had contaminated 
 it. A woman and her cavalier left at the same time, 
 but perhaps for a different reason. She was young, 
 radiant, beautiful, arrogant, and marvellously clad. 
 She, at any rate, was under no compulsion to stretch 
 money ; clearly she had command over a gushing 
 source of gold. The cavalier was oldish, elaborately 
 dandiacal, with white spats, a white border to the
 
 A FINAL PERFECTION 13 
 
 opening of his waistcoat, and the false spryness of 
 the ageing beau. The woman hesitated for a fraction 
 of a second in front of a Charles Conder near the 
 door, and raised a long-handled lorgnon to her black 
 and haughty eyes. 
 
 " Pretty thing ! " she observed nonchalantly, and 
 passed on. 
 
 Charles Conder had fulfilled his mission in her 
 busy, bird-like life. 
 
 As they crossed the acre of plush that separated 
 the dome from the street, they talked of a hotel at 
 Pontresina, in their high, hard voices. At the porch 
 an automobile, glittering as though jewelled, and as 
 large as a tramcar, came up with the silence of a 
 ghost. The chauffeur, staring contemptuously in 
 front of him, ignored even this queen. A lackey 
 opened the door of the vehicle, and she stepped 
 delicately in, while the dandy stood bareheaded. 
 The door clicked, and again in silence the glittering 
 and immense contrivance swept wondrously away. 
 The dandy replaced his hat, glanced down to see 
 if his necktie was behaving itself, smiled, and strutted 
 off. The lackeys resumed their immobility. 
 
 " There anyhow," I thought, " was the last word, 
 the final perfection, of something ! "
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 BOND STREET 
 
 FLAGS were waving in Bond Street, from staffs 
 perpendicular on the roofs, and from staffs horizontal 
 on the facades. They waved continually in the 
 sunlit breeze as though they were a natural and 
 necessary expression of the triumphant glory of 
 Bond Street, demonstrating that there was nothing 
 like Bond Street in the world. And probably there 
 was not. Next door to the Rutland Galleries was 
 exposed a collection of leather goods to which had 
 contributed every known quadruped with a hide to 
 his back. Gazing into those large and crowded 
 windows one was convinced that no activity of 
 human existence could be correctly carried on with- 
 out leather mounted in silver or gold. One could 
 not mark the hour nor the day of the month, nor 
 the year, without leather ; nor strike a match, nor 
 eat a sandwich on a moor, nor write a letter, nor 
 pray to God, nor use a mirror, nor gird one's loins, 
 nor identify one's dog nor one's cat nor even one's 
 
 14
 
 BOND STREET 15 
 
 self, nor smoke a cigarette, nor give a fiver to a lady, 
 without this indispensable leather. It was less an 
 adaptation of leather to life than an adaptation of 
 life to leather. An astounding relentless ingenuity- 
 had expended itself in forcing life into a mould of 
 leather, and fitting it there exactly. And through 
 the glassy portal one glimpsed vistas of more leather 
 gleaming with silver and gold, of leather put to 
 odder and still more odd uses, receding inwards far 
 into the entrails of London. Boots alone were miss- 
 ing from the menagerie : doubtless an oversight, a 
 temporary failure of the creative ingenuity. A 
 gilded legend on the window showed that this 
 remarkable house had existed since 1727, and that 
 the crowned heads of Europe availed themselves of 
 its cleverness in order to reign in leather. 
 
 The next house contradicted this one, and proved 
 that precious stones were the basis of a proper con- 
 ception of life, that life was impossible from morn to 
 eve without precious stones. Behind the windows 
 cave succeeded cave of precious stones into the 
 entrails of London. The second house too had been 
 established in the eighteenth century, and it was 
 written that the princes of the earth furnished their 
 diadems there. And these two houses were squeezed 
 close together, so that only a brick separated lapiz- 
 lazuli from alligators. For in Bond Street the wealth 
 exceeds the space. After precious stones came
 
 i6 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 orchestras and seats for theatres and operas, packed 
 close against the stones. And then cigars and 
 cigarettes, nothing but cigars and cigarettes, the 
 largest cigars and smallest cigarettes, the largest 
 cigarettes and smallest cigars, that fancy had ever 
 fashioned. And then suddenly, without the waste 
 of an inch, life became a range of neckties, and 
 naught in this world or the next mattered except 
 the colour and knotting of a necktie. And then, in 
 a great building, with a mosaic pavement in front 
 of it, and a name over it illustrious beyond the names 
 of kings, — the frock of the odalisque, sacred, mysteri- 
 ous, awful, consummate, ineffable : a shrine guarded 
 by heroes wearing medals ! And to placate the high 
 ministrants of the shrine seemed now to be the 
 supreme privilege of the male. And then whips and 
 spurs ! And then heads of hair ! And then little cakes 
 and sweets, a rood of them vanishing dimly into the 
 entrails of London. And then engravings after 
 Leonardo da Vinci and after Mr. Cecil Aldin ! 
 And then leather again ! Three-quarters of a serried 
 mile up, and three-quarters of a serried mile down : 
 all the houses depending on each other for support, 
 and waving to each other messages of the luxury 
 and splendour of an unrivalled civilisation ! And 
 equipages compromising with equipages in the narrow 
 defile; and moguls, incas, pro-consuls, eunuchs, 
 usurers, sultanas, houris, mandarinesses and serious
 
 BOND STREET 17 
 
 ladies getting in and out of the equipages, and in and 
 out of the shops, serene in the consciousness that 
 there was nothing more correct than this, and that in 
 the whole street not a single necessary of life could 
 be discovered !
 
 CHAPTER V 
 THE MALADY 
 
 Nor did I see any necessary of life in my slow 
 and melancholy promenade to Hyde Park Corner. 
 Into the Park I carried my causeless, my improper 
 gloom, and also my grim satisfaction in the fact 
 that Ravel had created a new beauty which no 
 neglect could wither. And I was amazed and over- 
 whelmed, as a hundred times before, by the effulgent, 
 teeming, entangled display of sensual luxury which 
 the Ladies' Mile presented. Welter of horses' heads 
 that a bearing-rein reminded to nod proudly ; gloss 
 of harness and of hide and of panels ; surging of 
 pale gauzes over cushions, and over the bosoms of 
 women who reclined almost horizontally indolent ; 
 flowering of monstrous hats and chromatic expansion 
 of parasols ; domination of automata in livery : all 
 that jammed and huddled together, packed so tight 
 that when one hoof moved all must move and a 
 pulsation at the Achilles statue was felt instantly at 
 Albert Gate ! And the crowds driving other crowds 
 like loitering sheep in the sidewalks, all staring and 
 
 18
 
 THE MALADY 19 
 
 being stared at, all affecting indifference in the 
 affliction of self-consciousness. And the battalions 
 couched on multitudinous chairs, staring, staring ! 
 And here and there large, flat, unpopulated expanses 
 of glowing flowers, every blossom separately tended 
 and encouraged to be at once orderly and brilliant ; 
 and swards, shaved and ironed every day into a 
 fresh perfection ! And then the great trees, climbing 
 powerfully upwards into the heights of the yellow 
 sky, and there breaking into a rich crown of heavy 
 dark foliage. And beyond the trees, cantering 
 horsemen, and more trees and lawns ! See it all 
 heavily and yet ardently alive in a haze of dust 
 under the implacable July sun ! Hear, without, the 
 faint immense rumble of London flowing on its 
 ways, there where the houses form precipices on 
 which painters and plasterers dangle ! 
 
 I saw it as imperial, as still the crest and summit 
 of empire. In spite of something called demo- 
 cracy, and something else called finance, the ancient 
 ruling class of England still in the main ruled here. 
 The faces and the gestures behind those horses were 
 unmistakable and inimitable. They could not be 
 copied in a century nor in two. And they were 
 regnant. When the drawling and controlled voices 
 said, with emotion, ' England,' they meant them- 
 selves. They were the excuse for England, what 
 England had to show for itself to the planet ; and
 
 2o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 England was still conducted to the ends of what 
 they considered their advantage. That which had 
 always impressed me most about them and their 
 parasites, counterfeits and dependants, was the 
 enormity of the physical apparatus with which they 
 had encumbered mere existence, the complexity of 
 it and the costliness. They were helpless without 
 slaves, and yet they had abolished slavery. There 
 were ten thousand wheels in my sight, and they 
 all had to be washed every day. And that was 
 nothing. There were hordes of women in my sight 
 who must stand limp every six hours while other 
 women hooked clothes round their bodies. And 
 every soul within view, even to the coachman, 
 required for every act of his life a special instru- 
 ment which itself necessitated tremendous labour. 
 The cockades on shiny hats were not ready-made 
 till they reached the shop-counter ; and someone 
 had put together with an optic glass the delicate 
 carriage-clocks ; and someone else had polished 
 and stitched the leather in which to enclose them. 
 And what virgins, or what mothers, had bent head 
 on breast for a whole day and a whole life to 
 embroider the monograms without which cambric 
 handkerchiefs could not rightly be employed ! 
 
 No wonder that space was so precious in Bond 
 Street and in the slums ! I saw in my mind all 
 the black-robed girls that enter Bond Street early
 
 THE MALADY 
 
 2T 
 
 and leave it late, ' assisting ' all day, deep in the 
 entrails of London, and acquiring steadily the virtues 
 of sweetness, patience, fortitude, and resignation. 
 And I saw the workshops crammed with stuffs, 
 and seamers and sempstresses, and inspectors ever 
 arising and descending to ensure that death was not 
 therein outrageously rampant. And I saw another 
 ring of homes, where a gross of boxes were made for 
 a farthing, and two shirts for ten farthings, and where 
 a woman might work for a hundred hours and not 
 earn enough to buy a Porterhouse steak. And I 
 saw also a vast foreign army muttering every 
 language but English in the basements and attics 
 of hotels and restaurants, an army recruited from 
 mountain sides and lake shores to cook food 
 and put it into the very mouths of the oligarchy. 
 And I saw the factoried provinces, under smoke, 
 and drilled to labour more ruthlessly than if the 
 factories had been barracks. And I saw the coal- 
 mine ; and the bakery. And then again I saw Hyde 
 Park. 
 
 " How crude and facile all these contrasts and 
 juxtapositions are ! " I thought. 
 
 And they were. But they surged irrepressibly 
 up, out of my melancholy, and reacted on it, increasing 
 it. Yet I think my melancholy might have been 
 cured if I could have seen any happiness inscribed 
 on the faces that passed before me. I was ready to
 
 22 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 regard suffering as a phenomenon, scientifically ; and 
 I would have pardoned, would have justified, the 
 cruelty, the negligence, the egotism of these pro- 
 cessional persons, if only they had got value for their 
 fierce deeds, if only they had achieved some sort of 
 bliss. They had not. They had failed. They were 
 all sad. They had the sadness of brutes, who know 
 not why they are sad. All the injustice, all the 
 oppression, all the sighing of the victims, was wasted. 
 The rulers had done nothing but complicate their 
 lives in an endless ritual of physical grossness, which 
 was entirely futile. They weighed their bodies on 
 a machine every morning, and thought to be happy ! 
 They were still, with the heroic obstinacy of igno- 
 rance, searching for happiness where it was impossible 
 that happiness should be. Their case was as desperate 
 as the most desperate. 
 
 Nor was the case of the enlightened any better. 
 The faces under the Rutland dome, surrounded and 
 caressed by beauty, fine faces many of them, made 
 fine by a deliberate and long withdrawal from that 
 which is gross and unseemly, spiritualised by mystic 
 contacts with the immaterial, — were these faces less 
 mournful ? Was my own ? 
 
 I was forty-two years of age, and in possession of 
 what I had all my life up to about forty, instinctively 
 and without questioning, considered to be the essen- 
 tials of happiness. When young and harassed by
 
 THE MALADY 2 
 
 o 
 
 the gaps in my equipment and the imperfections of 
 my technique I used to say to myself: "If only 
 I could achieve some really large and important 
 critical work, full of knowledge and also of emotion, 
 I should be content — content with the mere achieve- 
 ment." But when after ten years of devotion, I 
 finished " The Development of European Music " to 
 the scale of three large volumes, and knew that it 
 was good, my satisfaction did not endure a day, not 
 an hour. I said : " This must be published. This must 
 be recognised for what it is. And I must be admitted 
 to be what I surely am. Then I shall be content." 
 And I could not find a publisher for three years. 
 But when I found a publisher — and among the most 
 august — and the work was issued, and accepted as 
 a masterpiece and unique, and genuinely bought and 
 sold in addition to being discussed at dinner-tables, 
 and translated into German, French, Italian, and 
 even Russian, and scarcely a day closed on which 
 I was not the subject of some truly distinguished 
 flattery, — my satisfaction did not endure a week. And 
 I said to myself: "Is this all? Is this all it is?" 
 And bent myself to another work, as it were to a 
 forlorn hope. And when my half-brother died in 
 Indianapolis, and the sudden ownership of three 
 hundred thousand dollars' worth of interest-yielding 
 valuables, rescued me generously and for ever from 
 the annoyances due to an insufficient and unsure
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 income, I was no nearer content, though I could 
 give myself with much more completeness to the 
 study of beauty. I had the consciousness of immense 
 and successful endeavour, of being unsurpassed in my 
 sphere ; I had fame ; I had wealth. I had, above all, 
 my senses exquisitely trained to the perception of 
 beauty. In brief, my ambitions were realised, and 
 my desires were appeased, except the vague and 
 paramount longing, now numb, now acute, for 
 happiness. I perceived that I had never, no never, 
 been happy, nor made an approach towards happi- 
 ness. I had mistaken the road to happiness. I was 
 far on the wrong path, and could not trace the right 
 one on any map. Nevertheless my health was sound, 
 and remorse for sins was not among my discomforts. 
 I pitied the tragic haughtiness of the human 
 beings in the spectacle before me, in that they 
 sought happiness on the material plane instead of 
 the spiritual. But had I found it on the spiritual ? 
 I was the saddest soul in Hyde Park ; and the very 
 crudity of my revolt shocked me into a darker 
 melancholy. I could not envisage the whole problem. 
 I knew that everything I thought, in relation to the 
 problem, was crude. I talked sardonically of the 
 oligarchy — and I belonged to it ! The roots of my 
 daily life sprang from it. I too sucked the blood of 
 the humble. . . . Sell all that I had and give to the 
 poor, then ? No, my crudity was not so crass as that.
 
 THE MALADY 25 
 
 I knew that I could only dissociate myself from the 
 universal crime by suicide, and I had neither the 
 wish nor the will for suicide. 
 
 Never had I felt the ravage of my malady so 
 keenly as on that gorgeous and spectacular afternoon. 
 And the immediate cause of the last and worst crisis ? 
 Nothing but the failure of a select gathering to respond, 
 upon the instant, to the obscure appeal of a new 
 form and revelation of beauty ! From such a common 
 disappointment I had passed, by swift illogical stages, 
 into an overwhelming sense of the universal absurd 
 and mournful futility of things, a mood against which 
 my faith in that beauty grimly battled in vain. The 
 inadequacy of the cause proved only that my malady 
 was gaining on me ; perhaps it was gaining upon the 
 world. And my malady was the celebrated malady 
 of existence.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE RETREAT 
 
 Palace Court Mansions : this feudal name added 
 to the monetary value of the premises where I 
 abode. It is singular how the governing class likes 
 to pretend by mendacious street signs that it is 
 servile. Palace Court Mansions were not within a 
 thousand yards of a palace. Nor were they man- 
 sions, but rather in design a barracks. In other 
 respects they were well enough, dignified in archi- 
 tecture, and situate in a fine tree-shaded square. 
 Mysterious haunt — full of mysteries ! In the gloom 
 of a marble entrance hall, a scornful, fat janissary 
 whose cap-touching was the merest perfunctory 
 concession to our prejudices, stalked about in a 
 shining uniform. I had never seen that janissary 
 do anything but stalk about. A tiny boy, dressed in 
 a ludicrous exact imitation of the janissary, ushered 
 me into an electric-lighted box, and the box and 
 the boy and I shot upwards with disconcerting 
 swiftness. The boy spent all his days in swiftly 
 shooting up and down in the box : we had caught 
 
 26
 
 THE RETREAT 27 
 
 him, and thus we were preparing him for the 
 struggles and responsibilities of manhood. I was 
 thrown out of the box on to a hanging gallery in 
 front of a door numbered 45c. To me that door 
 was different from all the other doors. It was 
 sacred. It was my door. When with my key I 
 opened it, and disappeared, shutting it behind me, 
 none might follow, not even the august inhabitants 
 of palaces. Through that door I passed from the 
 hard neutral meaningless publicity of the echoing 
 gallery suddenly into an intimate calm seclusion, 
 where every object, every form, every colour, was 
 arranged to express and extend my individuality. 
 As soon as I had closed the door I could hear the 
 soft ticking of a grandfather's clock that in the 
 square vestibule marked not time, but eternity. Its 
 rosewood matched the chairs, which, never sat on, 
 reposed in idleness on a carpet as old and distin- 
 guished as themselves. On three white walls of the 
 vestibule were three drawings by Henry Ospovat. 
 A tall, thin girl was in the act of putting a brown 
 paper parcel on a small rosewood table that stood 
 between two chairs. She lifted her head. 
 
 "Nice and cool here, Marion," I said genially, 
 "compared to outside ! " If my nature had not been 
 so secretive, I might have said to her, instead : 
 " Fellow-creature, what is your own personal solution 
 of this vast enigma ? "
 
 2 S THE GLIMPSE 
 
 She smiled primly, defensively. 
 
 " Yes, sir," in a poor little voice that indicated a 
 feeble constitution. 
 
 She wore dark spectacles over a salient nose. 
 It had been a question whether, with these disfiguring 
 spectacles, she could be allowed the privilege of gain- 
 ing a livelihood in Palace Court Mansions. However, 
 right feeling, reinforced by the difficulty of replacing 
 her, had conquered. Her face was pale and her 
 shoulders stooped. She donned blue-and-white in 
 the morning and black-and-white in the afternoon, 
 and always there was a small white linen blossom 
 in her pale hair, called a cap, though it was not a 
 cap. Once she had forgotten to crown herself with 
 this symbol, and, perceiving the omission in a mirror 
 in my dining-room, had blushed red and run gawkily 
 out. This was the only occasion on which I had seen 
 her under the influence of deep emotion. A girl not 
 physically seductive. As to the qualities of her 
 mind I knew little. She had been living in my 
 apartments for months ; in fact, she appeared to be 
 always there, to be permanently fixed in them fifty 
 feet above the level of the earth. But I did not 
 even know whether she worshipped one god or three, 
 whether she loved or was loved, whether she was in 
 happiness or despair. I did not even know her sur- 
 name. All I knew was that she was called Marion 
 and wore spectacles, and that in a general way she
 
 THE RETREAT 29 
 
 must not address me until I addressed her, and must 
 never contradict me. And she had a companion more 
 recondite than herself; a being of whom I caught 
 glimpses perhaps once a week, whose aim seemed 
 to be to recede always before me. 
 
 " What is that parcel ? " I asked. 
 
 Marion held it up. 
 
 " It's just come, sir." 
 
 I guessed from the label what it was. 
 
 "Will you kindly unwrap it, and put it on my 
 study table ? " 
 
 "Yes, sir. There's a telephone message for you, 
 sir." 
 
 " Thanks. You might put this music on the 
 piano, will you ? And take my hat." 
 
 She disburdened me and noiselessly disappeared 
 behind a curtain. I went to the telephone, behind 
 another curtain, and read in the dim light on a sheet 
 of paper which lay upon the desk : " Mrs. Dean 
 telephones from the Ladies Athenaeum Club that 
 she will come to dinner to-night." Mrs. Dean 
 was my sister, a widow, some ten years younger 
 than myself. 
 
 I instantly murmured : 
 
 " Well, then, I'm damned if I don't ask Johnnie 
 to come too ! " 
 
 And presently, with the disc at my ear, I was 
 waiting, staring about me idly. Except for the
 
 3 o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ticking of the great clock the silence was complete. 
 Above me and below me, to right and to left of me, 
 groups of lives pulsated. The waves of the immense 
 sea of London dashed against the walls of my for- 
 tress ; but within the fortress, which was also a 
 cloister, my egoism had established silence and 
 calm. 
 
 And then there was a vibration of the disc. 
 
 " Is Captain Hulse at home ? I'm Morrice 
 Loring," I said to the lifeless metal before my mouth, 
 just as if I had been speaking to a human being. 
 
 " Is that you, Morrice ? " a small resonant voice 
 said in my left ear, after a long pause of clock-ticking. 
 It was the voice of Johnnie Hulse, travelling to me 
 over miles of roofs or under miles of pavements, 
 circuitously but infallibly guided. 
 
 " I say, Johnnie, where are you dining to-night ? " 
 I answered. 
 
 " Nowhere. At the club. I don't know," said 
 the faint, dehumanised, uncanny whisper in my ear. 
 
 " Well, you must come here, then." 
 
 " I don't think I'll come to-night, old man," my 
 ear heard. 
 
 " Oh, that be hanged ! You must." 
 
 " Why ? " persisted the disc. 
 
 " Never mind why ! You must come. Seven- 
 thirty. Good-bye." 
 
 I dropped the apparatus into its attendant claw.
 
 THE RETREAT 31 
 
 And as the clock resumed its empire over my abode, 
 I gazed absently at the senseless telephone, which at 
 any instant might summon me to it again with its 
 peremptory ring. 
 
 In the drawing-room, Ravel's "Miroirs" were 
 already on the piano, placed there by silent, invisible 
 hands ! Home of miracles ! I had only to wish, and 
 the wish was fulfilled. If I wished my dinner, lo ! it 
 appeared in the dining-room, various, copious, served 
 with the complexity and the solemnity of a mass. 
 I knew not how, by what machinery and processes. 
 And in this retreat the matter of visual offence had 
 never been allowed to enter. Where my eye rested, 
 there it rested on beautiful things — engravings, furni- 
 ture, wall-papers, carpets. The view from the wide 
 window consisted of nature's elm-trees, gigantic. 
 Around me were bookcases behind whose glass the 
 rich colouring of multitudinous books of four centuries 
 mingled with reflections of objects in the room. 
 Service, fine food, the instruments of aesthetic and 
 intellectual pleasure, satisfied ambition, the conscious- 
 ness of achievement, fame, health, knowledge, friends, 
 freedom, silence, calm : neither money nor long 
 endeavour could purchase more than I possessed of 
 the means of happiness. 
 
 I sat down, curious to decipher the first of the 
 " Miroirs." And the sound of the piano awoke the 
 enchanted stillness of the drawing-room. But I
 
 32 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 could not read that music at sight. It was music 
 that would yield to humble study but not to master- 
 ful intentions. There is music — and great music — 
 in the execution of which the courage of the soul 
 may in some sort atone for the stiffness of the 
 fingers. But Ravel's music was not such. To yearn 
 forth hints at it was worse than useless, — disastrous. 
 It demanded wrists and hands, as a sine qua non. 
 And actually I fancied for a moment that if I could 
 have been a virtuoso on the piano, I should have been 
 happy. . . . ! 
 
 Silence fell again. I went into my study, another 
 large, austere and beautiful chamber, with more 
 books, shabbier than the books in the drawing-room, 
 the earlier harvests of twenty years of collecting. 
 On the table were the contents of the just-arrived 
 parcel, placed there by invisible, silent hands : " The 
 Golden Remains of the ever-memorable John Hales. 
 Second edition, with additions, also letters and ex- 
 presses concerning the Synod of Dort, not before 
 printed. London 1673." Folded within the cover 
 was a bill of fifteen and sixpence for binding it in 
 half-calf. A curious quarto ! I had had it for years. 
 I had not read it ; I never should read it. Yet I 
 loved it, and the thought that at last it was worthily 
 bound afforded me distinct pleasure. I put the bill 
 into a letter basket, and, as I negligently turned 
 over the fragile yellow pages, I tried to decide in
 
 THE RETREAT 33 
 
 which bookcase and upon which shelf a place could 
 be discovered for this treasure. 
 
 And as I pondered there came from the next 
 room the sound of a woman singing lightly a few 
 bars of melody from Gluck's " Armida." I listened, 
 startled, and scarcely aware why I was startled. 
 The song ceased. I opened a door in the wall, and 
 passed into the long and rather narrow bedroom 
 whose windows, giving on an inner quadrangle, were 
 of ground-glass, so that that room, more completely 
 even than the others, seemed to be cut off from the 
 world. Twin Hepplewhite mahogany beds, covered 
 with purple, were the principal feature of it. Over 
 a chair hung a white skirt frothed with lace. On one 
 of a pair of Regency silver candlesticks which stood 
 on a chest of drawers was perched rakishly a large 
 yellow hat trailing feathery plumage. A man's head- 
 gear on a candlestick, his pantaloons cast carelessly 
 on a chair, — these phenomena would fatally mar the 
 effect of any interior ; but that skirt and that hat 
 achieved the final beauty of the bedroom, at the 
 same time humanising it. And I, who could appre- 
 ciate this, could yet not compass happiness ! The 
 woman stood with her back to me, opposite the 
 toilet-table, slim, straight, and tall. She was in 
 underskirt and corset ; the corset matched the under- 
 skirt. Her bare arms were raised above the pale 
 shoulders, the elbows pointed sharply outwards, and 
 
 D
 
 34 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the curved fingers met over a band of hair on the 
 top of her head. In the toilet-mirror I could see the 
 image of a handsome, smiling, and slightly roguish 
 face, the face of a woman of thirty-odd who has 
 come to definite conclusions about life.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 
 
 I HAD met this lady for the first time — that is to say, 
 I had effectively met her for the first time — ten years 
 before in the Rue Montagne-de-la-Cour, Brussels. 
 She was sitting in an open carriage behind a pair 
 of horses and a coachman. It was a bright, cool, 
 and windy day after Easter. The vehicle stood 
 outside one of the numerous jewellers' shops in the 
 narrow and steep street of luxuries. I on the busy 
 pavement, and she leaning over with a certain quality 
 of eagerness — we talked for a few moments about the 
 concert at which we had been formally presented to 
 each other a few weeks earlier. I told her that I 
 had really been wanting to meet her again. And she 
 said : " And do you suppose I haven't been wanting 
 to meet you again ? " She said with intense convic- 
 tion in her eyes that my musical criticism was 
 infinitely superior to any other in London or else- 
 where, that it had always fascinated her, and that 
 she had been wondering whether we ever should 
 meet again so that she might hear me talk about 
 
 35
 
 36 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 music. I saw myself through the eyes of that young 
 creature. Her eyes, her lips, her smile were all 
 inviting me as she leaned over the side of the carriage. 
 And her bearing was so candid, so ingenuous ! She 
 was fair, pretty, slim, elegant, intelligent, enthusiastic. 
 We were in a foreign city. The encounter had 
 romance in it, had in it something which transcended 
 ordinary agreeable experience. In a pause she 
 warned me that I was not to imagine that the 
 carriage was hers. And she explained that she was 
 in Brussels as the guest of a middle-aged couple 
 whose daughter had been a fellow-student of hers 
 at the Royal College of Music, and that her hosts, 
 who treated her with incredible kindness and 
 generosity, were at the moment in the jeweller's 
 shop. It seemed that they had carried her off from 
 London by mere force. Unfortunately they were 
 not a bit interested in music ; they were, however, 
 nice homely people, with plenty of money and a 
 capacity for enjoying themselves. Whereupon I 
 remarked that I assumed they could not, then, be 
 specially excited about the Gluck Festival perfor- 
 mances at the Brussels Opera, which I had been 
 sent from London to criticise. She had only the 
 vaguest idea of the Gluck performances, the modest 
 posters of the Theatre de la Monnaie not having 
 arrested her eyes. Besides, as she said, while with 
 her friends she had to cease to think about music.
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 37 
 
 But as I talked her interest in Gluck became feverish. 
 " Wouldn't you like to hear « Armida ' to-night ? " I 
 asked her. And she answered with an affirmative 
 that was passionate. "Well," I said, "will you 
 come with me ? I'm here for two papers and I shall 
 have two seats." She said: "Not really?" Her 
 eyes danced. I asked her if she thought her friends 
 would be shocked if I invited her to dine with me 
 before the performance. And she replied : " Of course 
 not ! They're American, you know. They'll only 
 be too glad for me to enjoy myself." I said : " Then, 
 will you ? " And I stared hard at her. She faintly 
 blushed. Then her friends came bustling and talkative 
 out of the shop, bowed forth by a little shopman 
 who responded to their broad American in Belgian 
 English. I was introduced, and had the happy idea 
 of mentioning my half-brother in Indianapolis. She 
 had been right. They were quite delighted at the 
 prospect of an evening's special enjoyment for their 
 guest. 
 
 I spent an afternoon of wearing anticipation, 
 nervous expectancy ; one of those afternoons when 
 the fingers of clocks and watches will not move. 
 Partly to pass the time, and partly because the idea 
 of work in the evening while she was with me was 
 intolerable and even inconceivable, I prepared in 
 advance as well as I could my telegram to my daily 
 paper. I can say that I have known the torturing
 
 38 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 fever of a grand passion, and it was on that day that 
 I was first seized. 
 
 We dined at the little Etoile, then as now the 
 best restaurant in Europe. She was in black crepe, 
 decolletee ; a large artificial rose in her hair. 
 Vermilion lips ; rather thin, but truly vermilion ! 
 Twitching nostrils ! Humid, glinting eyes ! On her 
 bosom rose and fell a blazing diamond cross, a gift 
 from those impulsive Americans ; they had been 
 buying it that morning ; hence it was that they had 
 suggested her remaining alone in the carriage. The 
 foot of the cross was nearly hidden behind the top 
 of her dress. The great line of Swinburne sprang 
 into my mind. Ah ! Deep division of prodigious 
 breasts ! She dropped her wrap behind her on the 
 old-fashioned velvet seat, exposing her shoulders, 
 bravely naked. And she straightened her shoulders 
 with a proud gesture, as if saying : " I am the desire 
 of the world." And at the same time her eyes were 
 surrendering to me. They said : " See how I trust 
 myself to you. Fragile, I am absolutely in your 
 masculine power, and you are capable of being brutal. 
 I like my peril." She gave herself a delicious little 
 shake as I poured out the wine. Filling of a glass 
 — sacred and symbolic act, beautiful in itself, and 
 how exciting ! I can feel again the fine thinness of 
 the crystal, the delicacy of the china, the heat of the 
 restaurant, and the flattering, curious gaze of other
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 39 
 
 diners continually on me and my conquest in the 
 small room. 
 
 " What a chance ! " I thought. " If I had happened 
 to take a different street, this stupendous miracle, 
 this splendid and terrifying enchantment, would never 
 have been ! " The conception of the hazards of life 
 made me sick, with a kind of retrospective appre- 
 hension. 
 
 We could not loiter over the dinner. Nor did we 
 wish to do so, for we were burning for the opera, for 
 the agitation of music. " It's a fine night," I said. 
 " Shall we walk to the theatre ? It's close by." In those 
 days and for years afterwards, I had to count every 
 shilling. " Oh, I should love to walk ! " she exclaimed 
 with eager assent. And she confided herself to me 
 for the passage of the dim streets. I had the illusion 
 of owning her ; she walked close, close by me. And 
 in the theatre she blossomed anew, and more magic- 
 ally. The audience was what is called 'brilliant,' 
 and for Brussels it was extraordinarily brilliant. 
 The Gluck Festival had the nature of a solemnity. 
 It was patronised by the press of Europe, and by 
 princes. The autocrat of Carlsruhc was conducting, 
 and the operatic stars of Paris, Berlin, and Munich 
 had consented, in homage to Gluck, to suffer the 
 autocrat's tyranny for a week. In the confusion, 
 Leopold, enthroned in the royal box, obviously took 
 himself for an enlightened patron of the arts and the
 
 40 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 sole restorer of Gluck's glory. " I hadn't a notion it 
 would be like this ! " she murmured, glancing round 
 about at the brilliance. Her vitality seemed to 
 increase even more, and she gave that little thrill of 
 the shoulders. What chiefly impressed me was the 
 intensity of her appetite for pleasure. She bathed in 
 it voluptuously. And the candour of her joy was 
 childlike. I said to myself, " Why not ? " All the 
 evening we were close together. Her responsiveness, 
 her receptiveness, her pliancy were astounding. On 
 every artistic point she not only tried to agree with 
 me ; she not only persuaded herself that she agreed 
 with me ; she did actually and genuinely agree with 
 me. She thought and felt through me, by me. She 
 reflected me more quickly than a mirror. She drank 
 me up. She became me. It was a tremendous, an 
 overwhelming experience. And beneath the vivid 
 music and the spectacle and the clustering radiance 
 of chandeliers, beneath the pungent brilliance of the 
 crowd, beneath our excited talk of music and our 
 careful manners to each other — my deference and 
 her delicacy,— beneath all this froth rolled the deep 
 rivers of our desire, silent but ruthless. Not art, not 
 spirit, not intellect, but our bodies were the funda- 
 mental and grave fact. Not our mouths but our 
 eyes, contradicting our mouths, said the true, para- 
 mount things. Her fine, courageous sensuality (con- 
 veyed who could explain how ?) inspired me with an
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 41 
 
 exultant respect for her and for that of which we 
 always endeavour to be ashamed. It effected for 
 me a transmutation of all values. My intellect stood 
 still in awe, as before a terrific revelation. 
 
 During the last entr'acte I had to cross the square 
 to the telegraph office. She asked appealingly if 
 she might not go with me. Going to the telegraph 
 office, to help to despatch a press telegram, had for 
 her the quality of an adventure. So we went together. 
 And she stood exquisitely out of place, fragile, 
 defenceless, and daring, with parted smiling lips, 
 near the grille, while I performed a brief but astonish- 
 ing feat of concentration in the high-roofed, echoing, 
 dim-lit bureau. This memory of the night is as bright 
 as any I have. 
 
 About midnight we were clattering in a closed 
 fiacre up the hill to the Hotel Bellevue. We had 
 little speech, but I asked her what she meant to do 
 on the morrow, and she said that she really must 
 go to the cathedral. The rendezvous was arranged 
 at once, and quite simply. As the horse walked 
 doggedly up the last bit of steep into the Place, 
 I said to her with an assumption of negligence that 
 I didn't even know what her Christian name was. 
 " My proper name is Iris," she said. " But I 
 hate it. I always call myself Inez, and so do my 
 friends." 
 
 Inez !
 
 42 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 It was one of those felicities that women have 
 sometimes. 
 
 After I had left her, with the correct ceremonies, 
 in the portico of the hotel, I stood still, literally 
 amazed, in the middle of the lofty avenue, where the 
 electric cars were still gliding in clangour and light. 
 I thought of how near she had been to me in the 
 fiacre. " This is the most marvellous thing that ever 
 happened," I muttered to myself, rapt, absorbed in 
 an ecstatic conviction of the marvel. I wanted 
 intensely to rush into the hotel and drag her out 
 from its protection. But I had irrevocably lost her 
 till the morrow. I kept saying to myself: "Why! 
 She's absolutely wonderful, and I could simply do 
 what I like with her ! I could simply do what I 
 like with her ! " 
 
 I passed a horrible night of longing for the future, 
 of fear for the future. I neither slept nor tried to 
 sleep. The next morning I saw her in the twilit and 
 pompous immensity of the cathedral. She was more 
 Inez than ever, and more mine than ever. No con- 
 cealment in those eyes. In crossing the nave she 
 bowed to the great altar. This startled me. I asked 
 her with due gravity of tone if she was a Roman 
 Catholic. She whispered : " No, but I often feel I 
 should like to be. My friends here are." Her eyes 
 were moist, and she looked at me with a gaze in 
 which desire and devotion dignified each other. I
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 43 
 
 was excruciatingly conscious of the charm of her 
 mortal frame, of her yielding femininity, as we stood 
 in the dark vista of the aisle. 
 
 Then six days of torture, six days of fevered 
 idleness, succeeded before I could see her again. 
 I saw her next in London, at her rooms in Clarendon 
 Road, off Holland Park Avenue. It was night. Her 
 little drawing-room was agreeably arranged as a frame 
 for her. Its chief article of furniture was a grand 
 piano. She gave lessons in the piano. She read 
 for me music which I had brought, and showed a 
 highly unusual facility. And her intelligence was 
 extraordinarily alert and receptive. It was admitted 
 and agreed between us then that we were indis- 
 pensable to each other. Words were exchanged, but 
 they were few and unnecessary. The fact that we 
 were indispensable to each other was too glaringly 
 patent to need articulate statement. I kissed her. I 
 held her. We were solitary and secure in the tiny flat, 
 under the shaded lamp, and she the image of modest 
 acquiescence. And my unconquerable conventional 
 pride surged up and took control of me. " No ! " it 
 said. " You aren't going to have any complications 
 in your life ; you aren't going to be at the mercy of 
 accidents ; you aren't going to do anything silly." 
 I left her immaculate. The next morning I was at 
 the office of the registrar of marriages. " She is 
 everything that one could want in a woman ! " I
 
 44 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 reflected, dazed by the very stroke of my luck. But 
 if she had had nothing desirable but that which the 
 eye can see I should still have been at the office of 
 the registrar of marriages. Her gifts made no real 
 difference. She had to be mine, at any price. I 
 suggested that the marriage should be kept strictly 
 secret till June, and that in June our friends should 
 be allowed to suppose that it had but just occurred, 
 so that we might be spared the tedium of friendly 
 remarks upon our precipitancy, and so that our 
 characters for prudence might remain intact. She 
 was delighted with the scheme. After three weeks, 
 of which I counted every interminable hour, we duly 
 figured before the registrar. And she was mine, 
 surreptitiously, furtively, with exciting, exquisite 
 accompaniments of stealth and chicane ; but lawfully. 
 And I drew a long breath and expected to be 
 happy. 
 
 Yes, it was a grand passion on both sides, and 
 for some time it enthralled us. The girl in Inez 
 became the woman under my eyes. She had indeed 
 the physical courage of her love ; and nothing in my 
 life has ever more enchantingly impressed me than the 
 timid silent spontaneities by which in the first days 
 she expressed this courage. I was not happy, I 
 was merely absorbed. There were two obstacles to 
 my happiness. One was that my work was summon- 
 ing me. I do not mean the journalism by which
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 4 5 
 
 I gained a livelihood, but the major enterprise by 
 which I intended to live. The summons was in- 
 sistent. The other was that I could not, from lack 
 of means, put Inez into the rich frame which her 
 instincts and individuality demanded. We set up 
 housekeeping with my furniture and hers, and hope. 
 From the circumstances in which I had first met her, 
 and from the atmosphere of luxury which she seemed 
 to emanate, I had thought that she must have some 
 regular resources. But it was not so. Her existence 
 could only have been a series of shifts, fortunate 
 escapes, and feats of equipoise. Often she must 
 have sustained life and brilliant appearances on a 
 few shillings : she depended on the fees of pupils. 
 Upon the disclosure of our marriage two vague 
 negligible brothers showed themselves momentarily 
 and vanished ; that was all. The financial structure 
 of her daily life seemed to crumble into dust at a 
 man's touch. I had no grievance whatever, but 
 such things are curious enough to mention. I could 
 support my wife. Support, however, was not ade- 
 quate to the situation. The perception of my con- 
 cealed unhappiness induced unhappiness in her, 
 which she also concealed, ineffectually. What she 
 felt keenliest was the constant tugging of my work 
 against the cords that held me to her. She could 
 see the cords stretching. The grand passion con- 
 tinued, still omnipotent, an ever-renewed source of
 
 46 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Lethean rapture, an eternal refuge of bliss from 
 the world's dailiness and from conscience and right 
 judgment. It seemed as if nothing could impair 
 its sovereign spell. Yet each day it aged, if 
 imperceptibly. 
 
 Inez abandoned the effort to conserve a clientele 
 of pupils, and determined to practise with a view to 
 public appearance as a pianist. I knew the scheme 
 was hopeless ; more than extreme facility and a 
 receptive temperament is needful in these days to 
 success in solo execution. She too, somewhere within 
 herself, knew that it was hopeless. The violence of 
 her appetite for pleasure drove her to a desperate 
 course that could only end in disillusion. But I had 
 to pretend to admire the architecture of her castle 
 in the air. I took advantage of her new habit of 
 industry to resume seriously my own work, and I 
 never again loosed it. Suddenly the practising ceased. 
 No explanation, no comment : it ceased ! Then Inez 
 became a Roman Catholic : which is equivalent to 
 saying that she became an ardent Roman Catholic. 
 My attitude in this picturesque affair was one of 
 benevolently-amused neutrality. One Sunday evening 
 I walked into Brompton Oratory with her. In the 
 theatrically-contrived gloom of the great interior, 
 dim figures knelt before altars. I was taken aback 
 by the violence with which she threw herself down 
 in front of a row of candles, and, hands feverishly
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 4 7 
 
 clasped, poured out an invocation. I was taken aback, 
 and I was put out of countenance. We emerged in 
 silence. Yet the physical courage of her passion 
 showed no change. The religiosity was only another 
 instinctive effort to gratify inexpensively her appetite 
 for spectacular pleasure — the appetite which I could 
 not gratify. I despised her now. I did not hide from 
 myself that on several counts I despised her. For 
 her receptiveness, her lack of original force, her 
 imitativeness ! For her fierce love of pleasure ! For 
 her frank worship of popular success ! This love 
 and this worship were implicit in her conversation. 
 (She did not give hints ; she was more subtle than 
 that.) Whereas my conversation implied that the 
 love of spectacular pleasure was barbaric, and that 
 popular success could have none but a disquieting 
 significance for the philosopher, and that effort 
 and self-approval were the sole basis of genuine 
 content. I used always to say that good work was 
 good, and could not be improved by acclamations. 
 She would agree that my work was good, and my 
 ambition heroic. She would agree to everything. 
 But when she heard or read of resplendent success, 
 and of glittering existences made possible by the 
 wealth that success had gained, — then with a single 
 gesture, a single intonation, she would divulge her 
 heart's secret. 
 
 And I despised her the more because her instincts
 
 48 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 were in accord with my own, which warred against 
 my reason. I too wanted success ! I too wanted the 
 appreciation of the mob ! I too wanted spectacular 
 pleasure ! But I would not admit it. I was too proud 
 to admit that my desires outran my possessions. 
 It was her frank admissions that irritated me. She, 
 with her beauty and her imperishable gracefulness, 
 was the voice of my under-self. We were straitened ; 
 but we had food, clothes, books, a roof, some 
 friends, and ample means of private aesthetic enjoy- 
 ment. We did not look poor. The rigour of my 
 blue suits and black neckties never fell short of 
 masculine elegance. Her simple clothes always 
 achieved distinction. Appearances were preserved. 
 Our dignity was kept. Was not this enough ? " No ! 
 No ! and No ! " her desires seemed soundlessly to 
 shriek. 
 
 One evening, when I was engaged in Fleet Street, 
 she went into the gallery at Covent Garden after 
 standing three hours in the queue for the chance of 
 a seat. And she reached home a few minutes after 
 me, draggled, wet. I was angry. My vanity was 
 affronted. I nearly lost my temper — a mishap that 
 I had avoided ever since an explosion at the age of 
 eighteen had made me ill for a week. I saved myself 
 by sarcasm. My wife waiting at gallery doors for 
 hours with the half-crown mob ! My wife trailing in 
 and out of omnibuses in midnight rain ! Had she
 
 BIRTH AND DEATH OF LOVE 49 
 
 no more self-respect, no more regard for the external 
 form of life ? And all the time it was myself I 
 was upbraiding. She was angry, viciously angry. 
 "When you can afford to offer me a stall and a 
 hansom you may begin to talk — and I'll thank you 
 not to begin before ! " she said, and added something 
 in the nature of an anti-climax to the effect that she 
 did not thank me for an occasional press-ticket that 
 nobody else wanted. And she retired to bed. The 
 scene was a profound humiliation, for both of us. 
 The effect of it seemed to pass, of course. But in 
 six months after that the grand passion was dead. 
 Of the immense and fierce conflagration nothing 
 remained but the black damage. The scene had not 
 been a cause of the passion's death — merely a symptom 
 that it was dying. Five years the grand passion had 
 lived. A great age ! Three is the normal limit. We 
 existed together, indifferent : which, on reflection, 
 seemed as miraculous as our mutual attraction once 
 had been. Existence would have degenerated into 
 an unseemly altercation had not my intense regard 
 for my dignity and hers continually animated me to 
 the effort of tact and restraint necessary to keep it at a 
 higher level. The ever-renewed effort was fatiguing 
 me into despair when two events — first the reception 
 given to my book and then the inheritance of my 
 half-brother's riches — conspired to rescue us. A 
 sheer hazard ! But we were saved. 
 
 E
 
 50 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Inez bore the blow very well ; and it is not 
 everybody who can survive with credit the shock of 
 great good fortune. Some shine in adversity, some 
 in prosperity ; Inez belonged to the latter class. 
 Although I secretly condescended to her again because 
 she found her happiness so easily amid mere symbols 
 without worth, still I admired her for her deportment. 
 She was neither maladroit nor consequential ; nor 
 was she extravagant. With the calm mastery of a 
 duck to water she took to the income which was now 
 at her disposal, and to the situation of being the wife 
 of a man who had won renown among the disdainers 
 of the multitude. Also, we were both diverted by 
 the amusing process of changing our environment. 
 Her taste in the creation of an interior was quite as 
 fastidious as my own, and in some respects more 
 sure. 
 
 Another detail. Less than a year ago, despite 
 an uncommonly powerful physique and constitution, 
 I had been overthrown by a serious attack of rheu- 
 matic fever. Her direction of my nursing was 
 admirable, and irreproachable her demeanour to 
 myself, especially during my petulant convalescence 
 when I defied doctors and devils to keep me in bed. 
 Throughout that illness the daily vision of her grace 
 — albeit a grace which never melted into impulsive 
 tenderness — had alleviated my affliction.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 ON INEZ 
 
 INEZ turned round from the glass and faced me, 
 dropping her long, bare arms. 
 
 "Well," she said abruptly, "what do you think 
 of it ? " 
 
 And she stood quite still, as if under inspection. 
 
 " Think of what ? " I asked. 
 
 "My new coiffure," she answered. 
 
 Her eyes gleamed ; her body seemed to quiver 
 with abundant life. 
 
 " Let me see now," I said, and sat down, con- 
 scious suddenly of fatigue, on the soft, yielding bed. 
 I put my hands into my pockets and stretched out 
 my legs, and gazed at that splendid hair. " Saucy ! " 
 I murmured judicially, and I repeated, with approval, 
 " Decidedly saucy ! " 
 
 " I should say so ! " she remarked, content. 
 Beneath the demureness, the sobriety, the self- 
 watchfulness of the woman who cuts an important 
 figure in the world, there peeped out for an instant 
 the malapert, the delicious impudence of the universal 
 
 5*
 
 52 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 feminine satisfied with itself. Not a wink ; less than 
 a wink ; a quiver across the eyelids ! 
 
 In her short skirt she tripped primly to a ward- 
 robe, and opened it and drew forth a tea-gown in 
 two shades of pale green. She held it up thought- 
 fully. 
 
 " I shall wear this to-night," she said. " Mary 
 won't mind. You've seen her telephone message ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said. "And I've telephoned to Johnnie 
 to come and dine too." 
 
 "Captain Hulse! Why?" 
 
 Her voice was never more beautiful than when, 
 startled, she raised it slightly. 
 
 " No particular reason," I said. "I just thought 
 we might as well give that affair every chance." 
 She lifted her chin. 
 " And did he say he would come ? " 
 " Of course," I answered. 
 
 She stood hesitant, with the imponderable robe in 
 her right hand, staring at it absently. 
 
 " Oh ! Well, he won't mind either ! " she said, 
 coming to a decision ; and she slipped on the robe, 
 and shook it downwards towards her feet with a 
 curious motion of the whole frame. 
 
 "There's no 'of course' about it," she continued, 
 closing the wardrobe and examining herself in its 
 glazed doors. " They had lunch together to-day." 
 "Who did?"
 
 ON INEZ 53 
 
 " Mary and Captain Hulse." 
 
 " The devil they did ! " I exclaimed, charmed and 
 astonished. " Who told you ? " 
 
 " Captain Hulse told me." 
 
 " You've seen him this afternoon ? Where ? " 
 
 " I met him in Dover Street," she replied quietly, 
 twisting her neck so as to glimpse, from under down- 
 cast lids, the back of the robe in the glass. " It 
 seems Mary came up to town this morning for the 
 day." 
 
 " Arranged beforehand, then ? " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 ■ The lunch." 
 
 "/ don't know," said Inez, with an inflection 
 playfully malicious ; as if she had said : " Don't ask 
 me what goes on between your correct sister and 
 Captain Hulse ! " 
 
 "Anyhow," I said, "he'll meet her at two meals 
 in the same day, instead of one ; that's all. It'll be 
 surprise for him — and for her." 
 
 " You didn't tell him she was coming, then ? " 
 
 " Not exactly." I laughed. 
 
 " Morrice ! " said the singular, the ever-enigmatic 
 Inez. "What's the matter with you to-day ? " She 
 said it kindly, half-maternally. 
 
 I grinned, and mischievously curled my lips. 
 Assuredly neither she nor any one could have 
 guessed that I was incurably unhappy and desolate,
 
 54 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 and that all this amused and naughty interfering 
 interest which I displayed in a matter that did not 
 concern me was no more an expression of my soul 
 than foam is an expression of the mystery of the 
 sea's dark bed. How deep life lies ! 
 
 " I heard a fine thing this afternoon," I said, and 
 told her about the concert and Ravel's " Miroirs." 
 
 "So that's it, is it?" she remarked. "You're 
 always like that when you've heard something 
 good." 
 
 " Like what ? " 
 
 " Larkish," she said after a pause. 
 " Oh indeed ! " I rejoined grimly. But whether 
 she was stating a profound truth generalised from 
 a long series of careful observations, or whether she 
 was saying merely the first thing that came into her 
 head, I knew not. One never does know, in these 
 cases. 
 
 "Was that Ravel that you were trying to play 
 just now ? " she inquired. 
 "Yes." 
 
 " My poor boy ! " She raised her eyebrows, as if 
 it were in compassion at my horrible failure. 
 
 " Simply unplayable at sight ! " I excused myself. 
 " My poor boy ! " she said again. 
 "Well," I said, "you try yourself, and you'll see." 
 " Oh ! " she lightly exclaimed. " I don't pretend 
 to play, now."
 
 ON INEZ 55 
 
 " You shall wrestle with Ravel to-night, at any 
 rate," I said. "We'll watch your struggles, Mrs. 
 Conceit." 
 
 Instead of replying she looked at me fixedly. 
 
 "And what have you been doing since the 
 concert ?" she asked. 
 
 "Nothing," I said. "I strolled feebly home, 
 through the park." 
 
 " Where did you have tea ? " 
 
 " Haven't had any," I admitted. " Never once 
 thought of it ! Anyway it's too late now." 
 
 " Morrice ! " she protested. " And look how hot it 
 is ! You know how you are when you get too thirsty. 
 You'll eat nothing. Do you mean to say you aren't 
 thirsty ? " 
 ■ " I won't swear I'm not." 
 
 She tapped her gilded foot. " You must have 
 something to drink." Then she rang the bell. The 
 spectacled girl responded. 
 
 " Marion," she said coldly, " mix a lemon squash 
 and put it in the study — at once." 
 
 "Yes'm." 
 
 " And Marion ! " She held the girl as by an 
 invisible chain while she turned .to me : " Have 
 you told them that Captain Hulse is coming to 
 dinner?" 
 
 " No," I said guiltily. 
 
 " But, my poor boy ! How do you expect them
 
 56 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 to know ? " Then to Marion : " Captain Hulse is 
 coming to dinner, as well as Mrs. Dean." 
 
 " Thank you, m'm." 
 
 The door was silently shut. 
 
 Very soon we heard discreet noises in the adjoining 
 study. 
 
 " Now go and have your lemon squash," said Inez 
 gravely. "And whatever you do don't drink too 
 quickly." 
 
 As I sat obediently drinking, surrounded by my 
 books, I could hear her quick, smooth movements in 
 the bedroom,— the rustle of stuffs, a few footsteps, 
 a murmured exclamation, the tinkle of jewellery. 
 I felt dimly that I had enjoyed that conversation. 
 Mysterious Inez ! She was young yet. She exulted in 
 the force of her vitality and in the power of her charm. 
 She was happy. She had within her a secret and 
 inexhaustible sense of happiness. She was without 
 ambition. Her ambition had been fulfilled and was 
 dead. She knew no divine discontent. She lived from 
 hour to hour, in and for the hour. She did not live 
 in the future. Each hour was an end in itself. She 
 never yearned for the other side of the hill, beyond 
 the sunset. She culled the flowers in her path. And 
 in my unfathomable desolation, which surged over me 
 again as I dreamed alone in my lair, I asked myself: 
 " But is not this the true art of life that she practises ? 
 Have I not always been preparing to live, and never
 
 ON INEZ 57 
 
 living ? I may have found knowledge, but it is she 
 who has found wisdom. She is wise enough to live. 
 I am not." 
 
 She had no eyesight for the inconvenient un- 
 pleasant imperfections that mar the earth. She saw 
 what she wished to see, and no more. And I asked 
 myself: "But is not this also the true art of life? 
 And if she goes to one extreme, do I not go to the 
 other ? After all, one must select one's facts. One 
 cannot see everything. One cannot take the whole 
 world on one's shoulders." 
 
 A door clicked gently. She had left the bed- 
 room, quietly, elegantly, with those movements of 
 hers that never jarred. . . . 
 
 Shallow ? Birdlike ? Yes, perhaps ! But how 
 mysterious ! And how graceful ! The infallible firm 
 grace of her gestures could not but be the expression 
 of something distinguished in her soul. This thought 
 intensified my sadness almost intolerably: that once 
 the sight of her could throw me into a fever, and that 
 now I could behold her unmoved. Gone, that 
 spell ! . . . Was I not unjust to her in crediting her 
 with happiness? Something was irrevocably dead in 
 her too. Could it be naught to her that now I 
 beheld her unmoved, and she me ? I felt as sorry 
 for her as for myself. I went back through the 
 sad, exquisite, violent hours of our long passion. We 
 were close linked, indeed, by the past, by all those
 
 58 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 days and all those nights. We had lived, together. 
 And now we inhabited the same flat, satisfying our 
 tepid desires with the sane and perfunctory non- 
 chalance of animals. Could she be really happy? 
 Or was her demeanour only a splendid proud 
 pretence ? 
 
 The piano sounded. She was in the drawing- 
 room, and attacking the " Night-moths " of Ravel, at 
 sight. It was a brilliant, audacious effort ; a supreme 
 effort to show me of what she was capable when she 
 tried. I thought : " By God ! She may be shallow, 
 but she's infernally clever! How many women, or 
 men, are there in London who could do that ? " 
 
 In that moment I was conscious, or deemed that 
 I was conscious, of the first flicker of a new longing 
 for her. Through her I seemed to perceive an escape 
 from my desolation ; a cure for my malady, or at 
 least a relief from it. I saw hope. I thought : 
 " Surely one can rebuild, knowingly ! Artificial . . . ! 
 But who shall say what is artificial and what real ? 
 I must teach myself to forget the future in the 
 present, and the world in her." . . . And I saw her 
 as an incomparable instrument and aid to philosophic 
 living, an instrument that had lain idle. " Oh yes ! " 
 I said to myself — I nearly said it aloud, " I must try 
 this, seriously. I must learn to live." I was quite 
 excited, and in my excitement I had the illusion of 
 forgetting my desolation.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE DINNER 
 
 I WAS late for dinner. Inez raised her finger at me, 
 good-humouredly reproachful. Hulse was on the 
 hearthrug, talking as usual. My sister Mary, at ease 
 on a sofa, was listening to him, intently, with a faint 
 malicious smile. Few disturbing phenomena could 
 interrupt Hulse when his lips had been fairly un- 
 sealed ; and certainly the arrival in the drawing-room 
 of a host was not among them. He shook my hand 
 absently but powerfully, without a pause in his 
 speech. Mary and I kissed with the nonchalance of 
 brother and sister. 
 
 " I was pretty late," she whispered, under the 
 loud cadences of Hulse. "But I'm not so bad as 
 you." 
 
 " Come along," said Inez. 
 
 We went into the dining-room, and sat down, and 
 Marion, the spectacled girl, who was petrified in a 
 corner like a statue of some realistic decadence, 
 received the magic gift of life, and began the religious 
 service of the dinner; and Hulse still eloquently 
 
 59
 
 6o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 flowed on, in what I perceived to be a description 
 of a collision between suffragettes and policemen 
 which he had himself witnessed at St. Stephen's late 
 that afternoon. 
 
 "Their faces were covered with sweat," he said. 
 " Their whole bodies must have been in a sweat." 
 
 Another man would have said 'perspiration/ 
 especially in presence of a woman like Mary ; but 
 not the unsparing Johnnie Hulse. All his existence 
 seemed to be a challenge to the world. He was one 
 of those whose chief characteristic is that they don't 
 care what happens next, one of those who are rich 
 enough to pay any price for candour. He went 
 about saying the things he thought, in his loud, rich, 
 orator's voice. I had met him a couple of years 
 before at the Savile Club, from which he had subse- 
 quently withdrawn, saying savagely that its manners 
 were too demure, and that it was the last and worst 
 stronghold of British hypocrisy. He never tired of 
 teasing me, who remained a faithful member, by 
 calling it the Mincing Club. He was the most 
 violent and the most persuasive man that I have 
 perhaps ever known. By profession, he painted in 
 oils. He was a pillar of the New English Art Club. 
 His pictures were small and rare and tremendously 
 defiant. A few were magnificent. I had one that 
 was a masterpiece. " I think that will give you 
 pleasure," he said to me when I bought it from him.
 
 THE DINNER 61 
 
 It did. Whenever Johnnie Hulse outraged me I 
 used to look at that picture and say to myself, nod- 
 ding my head : " But he can paint — I'm damned if 
 he can't ! " I was one of the few that did buy a 
 picture from him occasionally. The press and the 
 public honestly thought his work too obstreperously 
 absurd for even a moment's consideration. "The 
 worst eccentricities of the French school of Inde- 
 pendents," said one organ. " It would be revolting 
 were it not comic," said another. And another said 
 not a word, doubtless hoping the more effectually to 
 snub the fellow by this august and complete silence. 
 Of course he had lived too long in Paris. He spoke 
 French too well. These things put England against 
 him. And he was always against England. " It's 
 an impossible country for an artist," he would roll 
 out. " Im-poss-i-ble ! And I'm always coming back 
 to it." 
 
 He had no private means, and he would remark 
 that in a good year he made enough out of painting 
 to pay for his rose madder. Yet he continually spent 
 large sums of money. He was a bachelor, with the 
 most expensive of all hobbies : women. Now, at the 
 age of forty, possibly the ardour of that hobby had 
 somewhat cooled. In the matter of women, his taste 
 was as wide as humanity ; it included the very worst 
 and the very best. In all other matters he would 
 have naught but the best. He could never tolerate
 
 62 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the second-rate, in cigarettes, clothes, literature, trains, 
 — what not ! A highly experienced frequenter of all 
 the fashionable restaurants in London and Paris, he 
 was treated as an equal by chefs ; and maitres d'hotel 
 and waiters simply fawned round him like dogs ; but 
 then he had only one way of talking, whether to a 
 prime minister or a waiter ; and he never examined 
 a bill, and he gave enormous tips. He was the artist 
 royal. Strange and sinister tales ran about as to the 
 origin of his income. But the origin of his income 
 was quite simple. It came from his connoisseurship 
 in the old masters, in the painters of the Romantic 
 school, and in Japanese painting. He was acknow- 
 ledged, among the initiate, to be one of the supreme 
 European experts. And he stooped to dealing ; he 
 was a power behind the thrones of the great dealers. 
 " I must have money," he would say. " And I can 
 get it, so." When he had planted, at an exaggerated 
 price, a bad genuine example of an old master upon 
 a wholesale draper in search of correctness, his private 
 joy was infantile. Another victory over the hypo- 
 critical bourgeois — curse 'em ! He had had lean years, 
 and narrow escapes, but he had also had fat years. 
 In one resplendent year he had bought a Titian 
 from an ignorant fool in Liege for a thousand francs, 
 and sold it at Christie's for nineteen thousand 
 pounds. " Not honest, of course ! " he would admit. 
 " I ought to have told the ass what he was selling to
 
 THE DINNER 6 3 
 
 me. But it's within the commercial code. This isn't 
 heaven — it's the earth." It was in that year that 
 London heard of Captain Hulse's private orchestra — 
 a fleeting regal caprice. 
 
 The title ' captain ' suited him, with his tremen- 
 dous voice and often aggressive demeanour, and 
 his broad, square shoulders ; though his stature was 
 somewhat below the normal of his class. It was a 
 vestige of some youthful strutting in the militia. He 
 despised the military temperament with a cruel 
 incandescent scorn, but he kept to the title, calcula- 
 ting in hundreds of pounds its annual value to him 
 on this human, bourgeois earth. 
 
 " They were not cats," Captain Hulse proceeded 
 with his description to my sister of what he had seen, 
 while my wife and I watched. " No ! Worse than 
 cats. Cats don't sweat, and even when they scratch 
 they are graceful, they never lose their dignity. 
 There they were scowling and gasping and pulling 
 faces, their hats all awry, and most absurdly trying 
 to stick their feet into the ground so firm that the 
 policemen couldn't push them on. And there were 
 those great tall fat overfed brutes of policemen, with 
 leather round their waists to keep their gross flesh 
 from sprawling, shoving them along all the time, 
 fumbling, without using their hands, and looking 
 right over the girls' heads, like hippopotamuses on 
 their hind legs."
 
 64 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Never did Johnnie Hulse refer to London police- 
 men save in terms of disgust. It was their height 
 that he could not tolerate. He was secretly very 
 sensitive about his own stature ; nor did the thought 
 of Napoleon soothe him. Once when we were 
 standing side by side alone together at a bookcase 
 in my study, he had said suddenly, in a savage tone, 
 looking up at me : " Gad ! Loring, I could murder 
 you ! " " Why ? " " Because you're eight inches 
 taller than I am." " You could make hay of me," I 
 laughed, and he said : " I know I could." 
 
 He went on, to Mary : 
 
 " And the crowd, the miserable crowd of shabby 
 clerks and fly-swallowers, yah-ing, and yow-ing and 
 yaw-ing — cads, worse than a Roman mob at a circus, 
 and that's saying something ! It was obscene, nothing 
 else but obscene ! It took humanity back to the 
 stone and the woad age. And it was the girls 
 who were the cause. I call it an offence against 
 decency." 
 
 Mary, excited and controlling her excitement, 
 nervously looked down at her soup-plate. She was 
 wearing a large black-and-white hat. Why she 
 should have retained her hat during dinner I could 
 not imagine, unless for a sign that the visit was 
 informal and that she was a mere pilgrim. But the 
 retention of the hat was characteristic of Mary. 
 
 "And yet you say you are in favoijr of our
 
 THE DINNER 65 
 
 campaign," she murmured, and sipped at her spoon 
 primly. Mary was influential in the organising 
 councils of the suffragist cause. I guessed that she 
 had come to London that day for a committee- 
 meeting. She did not, however, form part of the 
 policemen-assaulting battalions. 
 
 " I was ! I was ! " Johnnie thundered. " But I 
 don't know if I am now. I hadn't seen the cam- 
 paign in action before. I only saw it to-day by 
 sheer accident ; and I don't want to see it again. 
 I couldn't stand it. It's obscene, it's bestial." 
 
 " All you need is a course of training," my sister 
 rejoined in her careful voice. " If you can't stand 
 the sight of women ' sweating ' in the street " — she 
 emphasised ever so slightly his Anglo-Saxon word — 
 ■ you ought to go and see them ' sweating ' in 
 laundries in Shepherd's Bush, and 'sweating' in 
 dressmakers' workrooms in Sloane Street, and 
 'sweating' in mills in Lancashire, and 'sweating' 
 behind bars all over England. And if that doesn't 
 harden you, you'll have to tell them personally 
 that they're obscene and ungraceful, and that their 
 proper sphere is the home." 
 
 He stared at her with his glittering eyes, but she 
 kept hers bent on the table. 
 
 "People won't stand those street scenes, you'll 
 find," he muttered. 
 
 "Exactly!" said my sister with false calm. 
 
 F
 
 66 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " And that's how we shall win ! Not by convincing 
 you, but by shocking you. The British public will 
 never be convinced by argument. But two drops of 
 perspiration on the cheeks of a nice-looking girl with 
 a torn skirt and a crushed hat will make it tremble 
 for the safety of its ideals, and twenty drops will 
 persuade it to sign anything for the restoration of 
 decency. You surely don't suppose that argument 
 will be of any use ! " she finished acidly. 
 
 " How true that is ! " he yielded, with a rich and 
 generous smile that instantly dispelled all the serious 
 hardness of his face. " How true that is ! " And 
 he was off instantly on his favourite horse, charging 
 against the cowardly hypocrisy of the British public. 
 
 Mary had won in the encounter. And few 
 women, or men either, would have faced the torrent 
 of Johnnie's invective. Inez, for example, never 
 seriously disagreed with him, never came to grips. 
 She would retreat — behind a fan, or she would abjectly 
 concur in his thesis. But Mary, the stickler for 
 decorum, the outwardly timid and gauche, the prim, 
 the demure, the tremendously English, — Mary was 
 a fighter. And she had a gift of sarcasm that was 
 a very dangerous weapon. 
 
 The widow of a rich stockbroker, she lived at 
 Harrow with her little daughter, aged seven. Super- 
 ficially she was the most English Englishwoman that 
 you could see in a box at a theatre. A neutral !
 
 THE DINNER 67 
 
 But the heat of the suffragist movement had somehow 
 broken the obstinate frost of her nature, and her 
 individuality had emerged, was still emerging. 
 
 Difficult to conceive two individualities more 
 dissimilar than hers and Johnnie's ! And yet at 
 their first encounter, six months ago, she had been 
 very visibly impressed by him, and he had surprisingly 
 confided to me his admiration of her character and 
 intellect. She did not conceal that she liked him. 
 She could not. Even in arguing with him, even 
 in pouring out satire on him, she could not. She 
 vibrated with a new and strange vitality when he 
 was present. These phenomena titillated me ; I found 
 them poignant. The matchmaker that is In every- 
 body was roused in me. Naturally, no one could 
 foretell the consequences of a union between two such 
 opposing creatures. But then no one could foretell 
 the consequences of any union whatsoever! The 
 prospect was not without danger. But what prospect 
 is ? He was, or had been, in plain word, a libertine. 
 Well, she knew. Everyone knew. I could fancy that 
 even that fact did not disserve him in my sister's eyes. 
 He was mentally honester than any stockbroker. 
 And she had enough money for both. It would 
 be positively exciting to see them married, to see 
 Johnnie Hulse as a stepfather, and the prim Mary 
 intimately foregathering with the violent amateur 
 of varied experiences. They were foregathering
 
 68 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 already. The lunch, tete-a-tete : at whose suggestion, 
 I wondered, had that occurred ? And what had they 
 discussed? It pleased me to consider Mary in a 
 new role. Deeper than all these feelings, was the 
 desire, possibly quite altruistic, to complete these 
 two fine individualities by joining them. I liked and 
 I respected them both. Johnnie Hulse, as a distin- 
 guished painter, a fastidious critic, an honest and 
 powerful intelligence, a man of immense moral 
 courage and an original artist in life ! As for my 
 sister, I have never respected a woman more than 
 I did her. And of her irony, and her harsh, brusque 
 common-sense, I was almost naively proud. 
 
 11 Marion," I said suddenly, " bring some cham- 
 pagne." 
 
 A childish idea on my part. But tradition has 
 made this meretricious draught the classic symbol of 
 joyous fellowship and spiritual outpouring. 
 
 "I shan't drink your champagne, you know," 
 Johnnie laughed shortly, half sneering, while Marion 
 was speaking in her unmoved anaemia into the tube 
 to the kitchen. He never would touch champagne. 
 
 " The others will," said I. " And I shall." 
 
 And we did, Mary of course demurely, timidly. 
 
 She and Johnnie nearly monopolised the con- 
 versation. It was their hour. I looked across at 
 Inez. Though she was silent, her eye too glanced 
 fires. A mysterious life seemed to be stirring darkly
 
 THE DINNER 69 
 
 within her. She too must have been quickened by 
 the quickening of passion in Mary and in John 
 Hulse. Far, far, within my soul, the real Me existed 
 still desolate, but resolutely saying to itself: "You 
 must learn to live. Perhaps the whole secret of your 
 despair lies in the fact that, having once loved 
 ardently, you had ceased to love. Perhaps it is 
 nothing more recondite than that. Perhaps . . ."
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE DEPARTURE 
 
 Inez sat at the piano, reading the " Mournful Birds" 
 of Ravel. I stood fingering a book in a corner of 
 the drawing-room, watching her. Mary and Johnnie 
 Hulse were together on a settee, watching her. The 
 room was brightest over her head. The lines of 
 her gown, of her arms, and of her intent profile were 
 beautiful. Her hands and the gestures of her hands 
 were beautiful. Strange that that woman could not 
 move without creating beauty ! The whole of her 
 life was an evolution of one grace out of another. 
 She was at her best when she knew that she was 
 observed. She became then a conscious artist, in- 
 tensifying by applied skill her appeal to the eye. 
 Hulse felt it. Mary also must have felt it. Mary 
 was pleasant to look upon, particularly her talking 
 eyes and the subtle critical malice of her lips when 
 they curved downwards. But she did not enrapture 
 the sight, and she was not complete. Her move- 
 ments were somewhat ungainly ; her dress was 
 no part of herself. Inez had a magic power over 
 
 70
 
 THE DEPARTURE 71 
 
 her dress so that it was always expressive of her. 
 When Inez put on a dress it became alive, endowed 
 with her life, and even a little fold of silk down near 
 her foot would illustrate the elegance of her inten- 
 tion ; she could kick the last flounce of it into 
 harmony. Mary's clothes, expensive, stylish, might 
 have been anybody's. Mary's clothes surrounded her 
 and trailed after her by force of hooks ; they passed 
 a dismal existence deprived of love. Mary scorned 
 clothes ; at least she scorned her own. Her good 
 clothes were her concession to conventionality. Mary, 
 having intellect and the effective weapon of humour, 
 relied on these. She did not begin to live, socially, 
 till her body was at rest and her acute self-conscious- 
 ness reassured. Then her individuality would be 
 radioactive. Whereas the individuality of Inez spent 
 itself mildly without ceasing in a persuasive appeal 
 to the sight. But it must not be invited to assertion 
 in other ways. Instinctively it avoided such other 
 ways. Inez seldom or never said anything original, 
 or even witty, or memorable. She shirked argument, 
 and if compelled to argue she lost her grace. What 
 intellect she had she would not display. 
 
 And yet the co-ordination of eye and brain and 
 hands necessary to the smooth reading of the music 
 as she read it, — surely that involved not merely 
 intellectual power, but intellectual power highly 
 disciplined! And it involved a rcceptiveness, a
 
 72 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 responsiveness, and a controlled emotional facility 
 that were astonishing. Impossible to dismiss Inez 
 as an inventor of attitudes and a flatterer of the eye ! 
 In an encounter, in a collision, Mary could have 
 vanquished her and rendered her ridiculous to the 
 understanding, so far as she might have differed 
 from Mary. But Mary could never have accom- 
 plished what Inez was accomplishing, nor anything 
 else on the same level of skilled effectiveness. Mary 
 could never shine with that radiance. Whatever 
 Mary's mission was she could not carry it to the 
 same point of perfection as Inez carried her mission 
 of affording aesthetic delight. Inez, who lived for 
 pleasure, was a marvellous instrument of pleasure. 
 And in such a feat as the feat of that evening, she 
 was at her best. 
 
 She had impregnated the room with the delicious 
 sadness of those mournful birds. Having finished, 
 she turned half round on the music-stool, her right 
 hand on its rim, and her face, in shadow, leaning 
 forward. 
 
 " Well ? " she asked, looking at Johnnie. 
 
 "Well," said Johnnie. "He'd got a nerve, no 
 mistake ! " 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "The man that brought that to London and 
 played it to an English audience ! Tcha ! " He 
 chuckled almost silently. " Tcha 1 "
 
 THE DEPARTURE 73 
 
 The thought of the dull, heavy hostility of the 
 English audience gave him an intense sinister joy. 
 He revelled in the stupidity of his fellow-countrymen. 
 
 " Do you like it ? " asked Inez. 
 
 " I'm interested in it," he replied, hesitating. 
 
 " He's only just landed in New York," said Mary. 
 "You mustn't ask him yet what he thinks of the 
 country." 
 
 " New York ! " Inez murmured carelessly. " My 
 dear, what are you talking about ? Morrice, I wish 
 you'd get me my cigarettes." 
 
 " Will you play another ? " Johnnie suggested, 
 leaning back. 
 
 " Play ' A Bark on the Ocean,' " I said, as I looked 
 here and there for her cigarette-case. 
 
 " Oh yes ! " she protested. " You choose the most 
 difficult, naturally ! " 
 
 I drew aside the curtains and slightly opened the 
 double-doors to go into the dining-room. There, 
 one table-lamp burned on the side-board, and under 
 it was Inez's cigarette-case. In the shadow, at the 
 far end of the silent room, a figure was bending over 
 the dumb-waiter. It was Marion, fulfilling the last 
 rites. I could distinguish the black of her dress, the 
 white braces of her apron, and the white blossom 
 in her hair. She jumped up on hearing me, and 
 her spectacles glinted darkly on her pale, flabby 
 face.
 
 74 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " Can I get you anything, sir ? " she enquired 
 with respectful eagerness. 
 
 "No, thanks," I said. "I only wanted these 
 cigarettes." 
 
 She turned calmly away. I could have gone up 
 to her and stood over and demanded of her : " And 
 what do you think of life, mysterious Marion ? " But 
 of course I did not. Was it a heart that beat within 
 that flat bosom, or was it only a clock ? It would 
 seem that I could not, by shutting my outer door 
 on the hanging gallery, shut out enigmas from my 
 abode ! I returned with the cigarette-case to the 
 glitter of the drawing-room and drew the curtains 
 on Marion kneeling at the extremity of the dark 
 dining-room. 
 
 Inez was staring at the music. Evidently she 
 meant to play again. Suddenly Mary sprang up 
 and went to the piano. 
 
 " Shall I turn over for you, Inez ? " 
 
 " Oh do, dear ! " 
 
 Mary drew a chair up to the piano, and sat down, 
 frowning as she examined the pages. And Inez 
 began to play "A Bark on the Ocean," having first 
 exchanged a smile with Mary. Those two women 
 had nothing in common. They had little sympathy 
 with each other. It would have been difficult to 
 believe that Mary did not intellectually condescend 
 towards Inez, and certainly Inez sometimes resented
 
 THE DEPARTURE 75 
 
 the razor which was Mary's tongue. Yet they sat 
 side by side as though endeared by the closest ties 
 of love and mutual comprehension. It seemed as if 
 Mary had suddenly felt compelled to flee from the 
 male on the settee, and that now they two had 
 formed a party for self-protection against the two 
 males in the room. Somehow Mary, in that moment, 
 appeared to me more a woman than I had ever seen 
 her, and less a mere intellectual sister. They made 
 a picture. They made a symbol. I thought : " Ah ! 
 why cannot all fine women be merged into one, for 
 the companionship of a man ? Why cannot a man 
 demand everything from a woman, and have it ? 
 Then the meaning of life might be clearer." 
 
 Johnnie was also affected by the grouping of the 
 women. He took from the pocket of his dinner-jacket 
 the sketch-book which he often carried, and started 
 to jab marks on it with a green-cased lithographic 
 pencil, scowling. I knew that he would be producing 
 something vehement and surprising. He would be 
 capable of centralising the interest on Mary's hat, 
 and of attempting to express the whole significance 
 of the composition in the curves of the hat. 
 
 Inez played courageously, surging through the 
 incredible arpeggios as the bark surged through the 
 ocean. And all Mary's intellect was concentrated to 
 the effort of turning the page at the right critical 
 instant. The room was full of heaving sound.
 
 76 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Suddenly Inez threw up her hands and the music 
 ceased. 
 
 " Oh ! It's absurd ! " she exclaimed crossly. " I 
 can't do it ! No one could ! It wants three months' 
 practice." 
 
 " I thought you were doing wonderfully." Mary 
 soothed her. And then Mary, turning to Johnnie 
 Hulse for confirmation of her statement that Inez 
 was doing wonderfully, perceived what Johnnie was 
 doing. Her face changed in a singular manner. 
 There was a pause, and she said, glancing at the 
 clock : 
 
 "Oh! I must really go. I must catch the 9.40 
 to-night." 
 
 Everybody was amazed. 
 
 " But you never go earlier than the 10.40 ! " said 
 Inez. 
 
 This was true. 
 
 "I must, truly, dear! I'll just get my things, 
 if I may." 
 
 Mary went quickly out of the room, nervous, 
 excited, not herself. A trifle had struck me. She 
 had called Inez ' dear.' Now Mary never addressed 
 another woman in that term, which she reserved for 
 her daughter. She hated any sort of effusiveness, 
 particularly between women ; this to the point of 
 an exterior harshness. Yet she had called Inez 
 1 dear.' Proof sufficient of her discomposure ! She
 
 THE DEPARTURE 77 
 
 seemed to be growing more feminine to me every 
 minute. 
 
 A caprice, of course ! The discovery that Johnnie 
 was making a drawing of her behind her back had 
 startled the fawn that crouched beneath that intellect 
 of hers ; had made her too conscious of herself and 
 of him. And the fawn had fled, capriciously, un- 
 reflectingly into the brake. 
 
 Inez lit a cigarette, and then said : 
 
 " I must just go and look after her." 
 
 And Johnnie and I were left alone. We said not 
 a word to each other. We were not quite at ease. 
 It was not to be expected that we should be. The 
 effect of his individuality on Mary's was too patent. 
 Mary was my sister : I felt in a way guilty of any 
 antics she might commit. Moreover, great develop- 
 ments, the mingling of destinies, might be immi- 
 nent. There was that in the air which could not 
 be hinted at, even between cronies. So we sat 
 silent. Johnnie closed the sketch-book and slipped 
 it back into his pocket. 
 
 After interminable minutes I rang the bell. 
 
 " I'd better takes measures for a taxi," I muttered. 
 
 " Yes," he agreed. " I shall see her as far as the 
 station." 
 
 " Oh ! " said I. " You're going, too ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 There was no reply to the bell. I rang again.
 
 78 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Still no reply. Then I went out impatiently into 
 the hall, which blazed with light. "Where is that 
 spectacled girl ? " I thought. The dining-room door 
 was ajar, and darkness within ; she could not be 
 there. I adventured into the kitchen, which was lit 
 but empty. Curious, perplexing, unintelligible spot, 
 the kitchen ! So abruptly different from the rest of 
 civilisation. On the white deal table an open book 
 lay with the pages downwards. And across the 
 green cover I read the gold title, ".Wormwood." I 
 hesitated. Then the door of the service stairs 
 opened and Marion appeared. She was nearly 
 breathless, and the sight of me robbed her of what 
 breath she had. 
 
 " Oh, sir," she gasped. " You give me such a 
 start ! " 
 
 It was the first time that I had ever glimpsed the 
 human being in her. 
 
 " I want you to get a taxi, or whistle down for 
 one, Marion," I said. 
 
 " I've just been, sir," she answered. " Mistress 
 told me to. It's waiting." 
 
 I regained the hall. I could now hear Johnnie 
 Hulse's stammering fingers on the piano. 
 
 "Great Scott!" I thought. "Are those con- 
 founded women going to chatter in the bedroom for 
 ever ! " I looked at my watch. It meant nothing 
 to me whether Mary caught the 9.40 or the 10.40.
 
 THE DEPARTURE 79 
 
 But as a matter of principle I objected to the missing 
 of trains and to the careless unfulfilment of pro- 
 grammes. The negligent forgetting of the flight of 
 time annoyed me. " What on earth can they be 
 talking about ? " 
 
 Without reflection I passed into my study. This 
 room lay between the bedroom and the drawing- 
 room. It communicated with the bedroom by a 
 small masked door, and with the drawing-room by a 
 large door. My directing thought must have been 
 that I might hear them chattering through the thin 
 masked door. But the masked door was open 
 several inches and there was no sound of talking ; 
 I could, however, catch a woman's movements. I 
 waited. The piano had stopped. The door leading 
 to the drawing-room was nearly but not quite closed. 
 I approached it, hesitatingly. As I did so I faintly 
 heard Johnnie's voice : 
 
 " He's gone to look after the taxi." 
 
 One or other of the women had, then, gone from 
 the bedroom into the drawing-room by way of the 
 study, immediately before my entrance into the 
 study. 
 
 I heard Johnnie's voice, soft and gentle now. 
 
 "Then she'll be at Brondesbury to-morrow at 
 three ? " 
 
 And the answer : " Yes." 
 
 It was Inez who had answered.
 
 8o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I said to myself: "I'd better not let them even 
 suspect that I've overheard that." And instead of 
 going into the drawing-room direct, I went back into 
 the hall, where I encountered Mary, coming from the 
 direction of the bedroom. She was self-conscious. 
 
 "And well you may be, my child!" I thought 
 grimly, sardonically, with ironical malice that equalled 
 Mary's own. Indeed women, even one's sisters, were 
 astounding! Here Mary and Johnnie had both 
 taken Inez into their confidence. And Inez and 
 Mary had been discussing rendezvous in the bed- 
 room ! Why ? What could be the significance of 
 all this whispering chicane ? Well, so long as it 
 amused them, I should be content! Mary and I 
 entered the drawing-room together. 
 
 Still the same awkwardness between all four of 
 us, the same timidity in meeting one another's eyes ! 
 
 " I'd sent for a taxi," said Inez to me. " I hope 
 you haven't contrived to get two." 
 
 " No," I said. " That's all right." 
 
 The Captain went forth hurriedly in search of 
 his overcoat. There was a certain confusion and 
 considerable hurry. Mary accepted quite tranquilly 
 the information that Johnnie meant to accompany 
 her to her train, she who had shrunk from him because 
 he was including her in a sketch ! 
 
 We all went out into the hanging gallery together, 
 the girls talking. The lift, a cube of light, shot up
 
 THE DEPARTURE 81 
 
 at great speed and stopped with a jerk opposite our 
 faces. The doors clicked open, and the uniformed 
 infant stepped out, saluting us in quasi-military 
 fashion. Mary and the Captain went into the lift, and 
 the child followed, caging them in, and for an instant 
 they hung there, close to each other, in the intimacy 
 of the lift, smiling naively. It seemed to me that 
 they were already united. At any rate their sudden 
 departure like that, with the knowledge in their 
 hearts of the rendezvous for the morrow which Inez 
 had doubtless helped to arrange during the intermin- 
 able secret gossip in the bedroom, presented itself to 
 me as having in it something of the irrevocable. 
 " And they do not suspect that I know ! " I reflected. 
 Though why there should be a conspiracy, and, if a 
 conspiracy, why I should be omitted from it, I could 
 not determine. Then the lift sank swiftly away and 
 the steel ropes trailed after it from the ceiling into 
 the depths. 
 
 We re-entered the flat, Inez and myself. I went 
 straight to the drawing-room, opened wide the 
 window and stood out on the balcony. The night 
 was warm, and high above the gas-lamps of the 
 square, higher even than the balcony, the elm-trees 
 waved uneasily, apprehensively, in the evening 
 breeze. 
 
 Underneath me I could see the forward-half of 
 the roof of a toy taxi-cab. The other half was 
 
 G
 
 82 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 thrown back. Three little figures, one white, flashed 
 across the pavement, and two got into the vehicle, 
 while the third slammed the door. I could hear the 
 strong resonant voice of Johnnie saying : 
 
 " Baker Street." 
 
 And the cab began to describe a curve, rounding 
 like a boat into the middle of the Square and so 
 towards Bayswater Road. It moved silently, as 
 though creeping after prey. Then, as it approached 
 the thoroughfare, it gave a stern double ' toot,' and 
 vanished into London. And they were in it together, 
 the opposing temperaments, piquantly imprisoned. 
 I thought : " For him, at the end of all his adven- 
 tures, Mary — the prim and English Mary — has become 
 the eternal feminine ! " And : " This will be far 
 better for her than continually worrying about the 
 bringing-up of her child. She's got something else 
 to think about now." I was glad. I was almost 
 j oyous.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE THUNDERCLAP 
 
 When I re-entered the room from the balcony, Inez 
 was again sitting at the piano, idly turning over the 
 pages of Ravel's " Miroirs." She did not look at 
 me : she gave no sign of being aware of my presence. 
 There had been a certain self-conscious stiffness in the 
 relations of the four of us, previous to the guests' 
 departure, and this had been caused by the obvious 
 effect of Johnnie's personality on Mary's. Now a 
 more intimate awkwardness lay between Inez and me. 
 I judged that it was due to the sense of expectation in 
 both our hearts, the sense that a new crisis, a solemn 
 and decisive moment in our lives was at hand ; for 
 I was convinced from her demeanour that Inez had 
 divined in me the birth of a different attitude towards 
 her. I was nervous, and she also. The future 
 depended upon ourselves ; perhaps it chiefly depended 
 upon me, upon the tact and the courage which I 
 should immediately display. None could disturb us. 
 I was alone, in the most favourable nocturnal circum- 
 stances of ease, beauty, and seclusion, with this 
 
 «3
 
 84 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 beautiful and accomplished woman. Even the 
 bright softness of the shaded electricity descending 
 on her hair and her nape and her hands, and on the 
 harmonious folds of her gown, and on the dark 
 spreading carpet around her, was an aid to the 
 enterprise ; every detail consented. 
 
 Physical thoughts shot in and out among the 
 graver in my mind. But they were not paramount. 
 And my reason repudiated them. I now seemed to 
 envisage my enterprise more clearly and completely, 
 though it was still vague. I was deliberately to 
 seek my happiness in Inez and in the imitation 
 of Inez. I was to occupy myself with this incom- 
 parable instrument of various pleasure which I had 
 neglected for so long. I was to do again, and 
 better, under the impulsion of reason what I had 
 once done under the impulsion of instinct. I was 
 to manipulate my existence, to prove by acts that 
 reason did reign in me. My life, in that I was 
 daily growing more unhappy for no assignable 
 cause, had to be reckoned so far a failure. But 
 the unconquerable in me would not submit to the 
 increasing domination of ennui. I was bored ; I had 
 possibly a quarter of a century yet to live : was I going 
 cravenly to submit to boredom during all those years 
 each of which would be longer than the one before 
 it? Was I ready to acknowledge so miserable a 
 fiasco ? The question answered itself.
 
 THE THUNDERCLAP 85 
 
 And in my need and my peril, I approached Inez. 
 I had been too solitary, too self-centred, too un- 
 worldly. I had committed the insolent error of 
 living in the world as one in a foreign country who 
 refuses to accept the standards of that country. 
 I had despised small things. I had despised the 
 present. And my attitude was guilty of intellectual 
 arrogance. Inez was the heaven-sent cure and 
 antidote. At its inception my movement to her 
 was egoistic. I thought not of her advantage but 
 solely of my own. I regarded her as an instru- 
 ment. But, as I reflected, my enterprise was tinged 
 with the beautiful colours of altruism. I saw that, 
 though her discontent had lessened, while mine had 
 waxed, she must nevertheless have suffered much. I 
 saw her as forlorn ; and her cheerfulness and self- 
 satisfaction as a thin crust over a horrible emptiness. 
 We had both been the victims of capricious love ; but 
 I was the stronger, the older, the wiser — I with my 
 condescending intellectual power — and my intellect 
 ought at least to have had the wit and the justice to 
 devise the expression of some sympathy with her. 
 Because we had ceased to love I had found offence in 
 her. True that she had found offence in me ! But 
 I ought to have been more rational ! I wanted to 
 compensate. I wanted to repair. Yes, I wanted to 
 make her happy, to envelope her with my sympathy 
 and comprehension and voluntary affection, as with
 
 86 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 an odour. All this sprang from my egoism, from the 
 acute realisation of my own peril. But whatever its 
 origin, it was genuine, and it was undoubtedly a 
 powerful medicine for my malady. 
 
 My feeling was less rapturous than first love ; but 
 it was finer. First love seemed crude, clumsy, blind, 
 compared to it. I was acting now in the plenitude of 
 reason and of experience. My heart was mellowed, 
 the sweep of my brain far wider. My vision went 
 beyond death. I knew that matter and spirit were 
 one and were eternal, having never been created, 
 incapable of ever being destroyed. I knew that 
 every thought and deed reverberated in the future 
 with everlasting consequences, and that to be true or 
 false to the fleeting hour was to be true or false to 
 eternity. In brief, I was religious. 
 
 Inez began to play, softly, a detached and salient 
 phrase from the " Mournful Birds." She repeated it 
 several times, and it resounded delicately in the room, 
 intensely sad. But it did not sadden me. I exulted 
 in her interpretation of it, in her quick and accurate 
 responsiveness to the mood of the composer. I said 
 to myself again : " After all, this woman is marvel- 
 lous. Look at her, sitting there, — is she not a 
 miracle ? " I reflected how much easier it was, for a 
 man of my intellectual solitude and impatience, to 
 live with a creature like Inez than with a creature 
 like Mary, Mary was not receptive ; she did not
 
 THE THUNDERCLAP 87 
 
 take impressions. She could not be cajoled with a 
 caress or a flattery or a comforting deviation from 
 the truth. She spent herself intellectually, and she 
 expected others to do the same. She could not 
 leave things alone ; she would not be put off. She 
 was a rock, and when she collided with other rocks, 
 the jar was afflicting. I admired and respected her ; 
 I had a great affection for her. But I said to myself 
 that if I had to live with her I should expire of fatigue 
 and loss of blood. Whereas Inez could be managed. 
 Inez had none of that terrible hatred of compromise. 
 You might call her intellectually dishonest ; but it 
 would be fairer to say that she attached no importance 
 to intellect either honest or dishonest; she perhaps 
 feared it slightly. She existed among her instincts 
 on the aesthetic and emotional plane. She was never 
 really ashamed of her instincts. Call her less 
 advanced than Mary ; call her nearer the savage. 
 But what a source of pleasure to all the senses ! 
 What an aesthetic delight ! What extreme skill she 
 had acquired in the expression of the responsiveness 
 by means of which alone she could satisfy her 
 instincts ! 
 
 Now, the physical thoughts which I had repulsed 
 gradually rose uppermost in my mind. And I did 
 not try to repulse them. It seemed to me to be 
 right, to be at any rate inevitable, that they should 
 soften the hard operations of my reason. I abandoned
 
 88 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 myself to them. She was within ten feet of me, the 
 miracle. And suddenly I lost the sense of the 
 mysteriousness of woman, and of Inez in particular, 
 which had been growing in me. I knew that the 
 mysteriousness of woman vanished the instant you 
 brutally faced it. Boys and ageing celibates are 
 obsessed by the mysteriousness of woman. The 
 obsession is a sign either of immaturity or of 
 morbidity. The mysteriousness of woman, — take her, 
 and see then if she is mysterious ! . . . 
 
 How could I begin my enterprise of reconstructing 
 our two lives ? The moment was pregnant with 
 consequences. Inez still played, intermittently. I 
 said to myself that I must do something, that I 
 must make a start, and that to postpone might be 
 fatal. Some act, some gesture, some word, must be 
 launched forth. I waited for myself, as for another. 
 And expectancy passed into an anguish of appre- 
 hension. An enchantment lay upon us. 
 
 It was she who broke it, by saying, without 
 looking round : 
 
 " I wonder if they were in time for the train." 
 
 I laughed. " If they weren't, it would be no new 
 thing, for him at any rate. However," I added, with 
 a touch of gay quizzicalness, "you may depend on 
 his being prompt to-morrow." 
 
 " To-morrow ? " she questioned, in a peculiar, 
 uncertain tone, still without turning round.
 
 THE THUNDERCLAP 89 
 
 "Yes," I said. "At Brondesbury, at three." 
 Assuredly there was laughter in my voice. I was 
 jocund. I deemed it bizarre — this rendezvous between 
 Mary and Johnnie at Brondesbury at three, this 
 rendezvous which they had concealed from me, but 
 of which Inez had been the privy agent. But I 
 accepted it in excellent humour, and I saw no reason 
 why I should hide my knowledge of it from my 
 wife. 
 
 Then came the thunderclap. 
 
 "You've been listening — you've been eavesdrop- 
 ping ! " she exclaimed harshly, in the hoarse tone of 
 one who is parched by thirst. She revolved on the 
 music-stool, and faced me. She was angry, acutely 
 inimical : to what extent I did not immediately 
 realise. 
 
 "My dear girl " I murmured, at a loss. 
 
 The expression of her features made me feel sick 
 with fear. I do not exaggerate. The whole pose 
 of her body indicated a violent emotion of bitter 
 hostility towards me. All her grace had gone. I 
 was dumbfounded. I was completely mystified. I 
 was put to shame. I could not think. Slowly — and 
 yet how rapidly ! — there formed itself in my mind the 
 idea that I was to be the victim of some irremediable 
 and astounding disaster. The room was changed 
 into a theatre of fate, and it seemed extraordinary to 
 me that the electric light should be burning as usual.
 
 9 o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " Don't ! " Inez cried. " I won't stand any more. 
 I won't stand it! I told Johnnie all along you 
 guessed. But he wouldn't believe me. How long 
 have you known ? " 
 
 " Known what ? " 
 
 She answered in a smothered voice,- looking at 
 the carpet: "About Johnnie and me." 
 
 I offered no reply. I could not speak. The 
 whole feverish energy of my brain was employed in 
 a tremendous readjustment of all my notions of the 
 immediate past and of that evening. I was like a 
 man who has stumbled on a cipher-key which turns 
 a series of harmless and agreeable phrases into some 
 dire and convincing prophecy of woe. I said nothing. 
 I was aware of a terrific desire to rise and wrench 
 the electric chandelier out of the ceiling, and with it 
 to destroy everything fragile in the room. By an 
 immense, a too costly effort, I restrained myself, 
 for I surmised that if I yielded to the desire I should 
 rave into madness. I sat still. 
 
 I had remembered a habit of Johnnie Hulse's. 
 When he wished to cajole, to be tender, he would 
 address a woman in the third person, as one addresses 
 a charming child. I had heard him do it more than 
 once ; I well recalled one occasion in the promenade 
 of the Ottoman Theatre of Varieties. 
 
 " Cur ! " she said, blazing on me. " I wonder you 
 weren't ashamed. . . . No, I don't ! I don't ! . . .
 
 THE THUNDERCLAP 91 
 
 Keeping up all this pretence that you thought it was 
 Mary he was keen on ! And then asking him to 
 dinner on the top of everything! And keeping it 
 up all the evening, as you did ! . . . Well, it 
 serves you right! But you needn't think I didn't 
 know ! I felt it all the time. Johnnie thought he 
 had persuaded me I was wrong, and I tried to be 
 persuaded. But I never was ! I never was ! I've 
 known for days you knew. I expect you thought 
 yourself frightfully clever and superior — horrid old 
 cat playing with two mice. Well, you weren't so 
 clever as you imagined. I knew you knew ! I knew ! 
 And I didn't care ! And I don't care ! " 
 
 She paused. Then she exploded in supreme 
 scornful disgust : 
 
 tt It was just like y 071 1 " 
 
 She did not move. Nor did I. All the faces 
 in all the pictures seemed to wait. 
 
 A voice which issued from my lips said coldly 
 to Inez : 
 
 " You are very melodramatic. I did not know. 
 I knew nothing. I suspected nothing at all. I 
 did by mere accident overhear him saying, ' Will 
 she be at Brondesbury at three ? ' But I thought 
 he meant Mary, because I had Mary in my 
 mind." 
 
 She shook her head violently, determined to 
 disbelieve.
 
 92 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " You've simply given yourself away," said the 
 same cold voice. 
 
 (" It is astonishing," I thought, " that I should be 
 talking calmly like this. Has something snapped in 
 my head ? ") 
 
 She would have given worlds to be able to con- 
 tinue to disbelieve, to be able to condemn me in her 
 heart as an icy and devilish mocking monster of 
 horrible guile. But she could not She remained 
 silent. 
 
 "You've simply given yourself away," the voice 
 numbly repeated. 
 
 "Well," she rasped. "What if I have! Now 
 you know ! And I'm glad ! " 
 
 She jumped up from the music-stool, turned on 
 her heel, flung back the tail of her skirt with a 
 characteristic gesture, and walked slowly and proudly 
 from the room into the study, the door of which was 
 still ajar. Her skirt followed her, as it were reluc- 
 tantly, round the jamb of the doorway and vanished. 
 The door banged. I was alone with the furniture 
 and the hangings and the pictures, and all these dead 
 things had life, were tingling and trembling to the 
 thunderclap. Only I was calm and cold.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 IN THE STUDY 
 
 The classic deceived husband, fatuously blind : I had 
 been that! How often in my life had I smiled at 
 the proverbial philosophy of those artists in adultery, 
 the French, who postulate the stupid vanity of the 
 male spouse ; superiorly thinking that no matter 
 what wife I might have chanced to marry, that par- 
 ticular mishap could never overtake me unawares ! 
 
 There it was ! 
 
 I saw everything in a new light. There was 
 nothing, in the recent behaviour of Captain Hulse 
 and Inez, which did not seem to contribute proof of 
 their guilt. Even the sudden throwing up of her 
 hands when she was reading Ravel's music — how 
 unlike her that was, really ! It had always been a 
 point of honour with her never to stop when she had 
 once began to read music at sight, until somehow 
 she arrived triumphant at the end. That she should 
 have so thrown up her hands was absolute proof 
 of inquietude due to some recondite cause. Un- 
 doubtedly the tenour of the evening had affected her 
 
 93
 
 94 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 profoundly. The situation, aggravated by her secret 
 conviction that my ignorance of it was assumed, had 
 lacerated her nerves till she scarcely knew what she 
 was doing. And I had not suspected ! Her silences, 
 her baffling demeanour, her self-consciousness, had 
 been due not in the slightest degree to her preoccu- 
 pation concerning my new attitude towards her ; but 
 to something quite other. It was certain that she 
 had not perceived any change in my attitude towards 
 her. She had of course not guessed that I was con- 
 ceiving new lives for us both. And I had not 
 suspected ! Imbecile egotism ! 
 
 Those two had swathed and swathed me in 
 deceit. They had, for example, taken advantage of my 
 naive interest in the fact that Johnnie had impressed 
 my sister. Johnnie at any rate had judiciously 
 fostered in me the illusion that the attraction was 
 mutual. He had utilised my sister as a cover for my 
 wife. Or at any rate he had seen no reason why 
 he should deprive himself of my sister's diverting 
 tongue because he happened to be making love to my 
 wife. How preposterous ever to have supposed that 
 a man like Johnnie would make love to a woman 
 like my sister — with her ideas ! Yet I had supposed 
 it. How audaciously and how successfully he had 
 practised on my simplicity ! I could hear him dis- 
 creetly hinting to Inez, in the drawing-room, before 
 Mary had come and before I had come, that he
 
 IN THE STUDY 95 
 
 should ' play up ' to Mary for my benefit during the 
 evening. I could catch the calm cynicism of his 
 tone. . . . All the subsequent self-consciousness, which 
 I had set down to a general perception of a nascent 
 passion between Johnnie and Mary, had sprung from 
 an origin infinitely more complex. Nay more ! I 
 could believe now that Mary's sudden departure 
 might have been owing to a lightning of the truth in 
 her mind. Woman's intuition, and so forth ! Who 
 could say ? 
 
 And I had celebrated the occasion with champagne. 
 
 Of course Johnnie's conduct was infamous ! It 
 would have been infamous without the astounding 
 insult to my sister. That made it merely ineffable. 
 Yes, but in my heart I did not feel it to be infamous. 
 I could not, to myself, argue like a fashionable K.C. 
 in the Divorce Court. My opinion of Johnnie as a 
 man of honour scarcely fell. So far as Johnnie was 
 concerned I regarded my case as the case of some 
 third person. I knew that the code of honour does 
 not run in the kingdom of passion. In that kingdom 
 everything became suddenly 'different,' all laws 
 being abrogated. I knew that Johnnie would not 
 be ashamed. He would be annoyed, when he knew 
 of Inez's confession ; he would sympathise with me. 
 But he Would not blush. I knew that no man whose 
 mind was broad and vigorous enough for me to 
 respect it, would refuse to take the hand of Johnnie
 
 96 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Hulse because the dog had made his intimate friend 
 a cuckold. Useless to talk about ruining a home, 
 outraging hospitality, base deceit, flagrant immo- 
 rality ! Phrases ! Phrases ! Unsupported by the 
 genuine opinion of either men or women. She loved 
 him ; she had ceased to love me. Her life was a 
 desert with me ; he was the oasis to slake her thirst 
 for romantic sympathy. Hence all was permitted, 
 all was excusable. 
 
 Do you know what I resented more than any- 
 thing ? Her solicitude in the bedroom when she 
 learnt that I had forgotten my tea ! Her ' Morrice ! ' 
 half petulant and half maternal ! Her ' my poor 
 boy,' ditto ! Her good-humoured reproachful raised 
 finger when I came late into the drawing-room for 
 dinner ! Shameful acting ! Acting beyond the 
 bounds of cynicism ! And if all this was not acting, 
 if it came naturally to her, then it was even worse ; 
 it was immoral in a deep and universal sense, 
 surpassing the sexual. 
 
 Why Brondesbury ? Had the fellow got a second 
 garconniere (oh, language of the French, we could 
 not do without you, in these matters !) up at Bron- 
 desbury ? If so, the choice of Brondesbury was a 
 fair example of the wild and yet wise humour which 
 pervaded his amorous life ? But he had never 
 breathed the quaint name of Brondesbury to me ! . . . 
 Well, naturally !
 
 IN THE STUDY 97 
 
 Perhaps she was not yet his mistress. I did not 
 know. I knew naught save that they were presum- 
 ably all in all to each other. And I should never 
 enquire. Words give existence to things. In some 
 circumstances speech is morbid, and the desire for 
 speech a demonstration of weakness. 
 
 Well, she had caught him too! He too was 
 down at her level, forced into all the pretences and 
 self-deceptions which are inevitable when intelligence 
 must subordinate itself to instinct. I pitied him — 
 him a distinguished artist, a powerful and original 
 individuality, my equal, creatively far more than my 
 equal ! 
 
 I had indeed chosen a suitable moment to expend 
 my sympathy upon her, to occupy myself with the 
 question of her happiness, and even the question of 
 her eternal welfare ! My heart had been sending 
 out to her waves of human affection ; my con- 
 science had been exercised concerning my obligations 
 to her. I had drawn close to her. I had dissolved 
 in tenderness. I had excused her. I had repri- 
 manded myself. I was plotting her bliss. And, the 
 while, she and Johnnie were all in all to each other. 
 Reward of virtue ! Reward of fatuity ! 
 
 I knew that my case was hopeless now. The sole 
 way of escape was gone. I was ruined, beaten. I 
 should have to acknowledge my life a fiasco. Nothing 
 could save me from that humiliation, nor avert the 
 
 H
 
 98 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 disaster of middle-age and old-age. I had just to 
 set my teeth, — and exist. There is a certain satis- 
 faction in hopelessness amid the extreme of misery. 
 You press it to you, as the martyr clutched the 
 burning faggot. You enjoy it. You savour, piquantly, 
 your woe, your shame, your abjectness, the failure of 
 your philosophy. You celebrate the perdition of the 
 man in you. You want to talk about it, brazenly ; 
 even to exaggerate it, and to swagger over it. Neither 
 in the world, nor in my sanctuary, could I dis- 
 tinguish any ray of promise. I abandoned myself 
 to despair and bitterness, as to the bosom of a 
 woman. I saw the years passing slowly over me as 
 I lay supine. 
 
 Then I heard a faint regular sound of sobbing, 
 which came from the study. Instead of retiring to 
 the bedroom, as she ought to have done, Inez had 
 halted in my study, and was making a foolish scene 
 there by herself, to herself. I had a desire to go to 
 her. But I thought angrily : " No. I won't go near 
 her. She can blubber there all night for all I care." 
 Still, I had a desire to go to her. Perhaps it was to 
 triumph over her ; perhaps it was to show her with 
 calm impartiality how far I was above her ; perhaps 
 it was to clutch my faggot ; or perhaps it was the 
 mere housemaidish hankering to talk, talk, repeating 
 the same idea a thousand times, when words are 
 viciously futile.
 
 IN THE STUDY 99 
 
 I rose. A force within me was driving me towards 
 her. My movements were curiously clumsy. I had 
 a strong recurrence of my former impulse to wrench 
 down the electric chandelier. But again I refrained. 
 I yawned. Glancing at myself in the mirror of the 
 overmantel I saw nothing abnormal in my appear- 
 ance. It did not appear to me that I was even 
 paler than usual. I opened the study door, full of 
 morbid curiosity. My limbs continued to be very 
 maladroit in executing the orders of my brain. 
 
 The electricity was not turned on in the study, 
 but through the uncurtained window there came 
 enough diffused luminosity to show dimly the various 
 objects in the room. At first I did not see her, for 
 at the noise of the door she had ceased sobbing. 
 Then I distinguished her form, at the desk. She 
 was seated in my writing-chair ; her left elbow was 
 on the desk and her head lay on her left hand. She 
 had chosen my writing-chair, in which no one ever 
 sat but me, for weeping ; she was weeping on my 
 blotting-pad ! It was, I thought, just like a woman. 
 But perhaps she did not know what she was 
 doing. 
 
 I pulled at the little electric knob, and a cascade 
 of light descended upon her. I meant to avoid the 
 sentimentality of twilight scenes. Now I could see 
 the tear-marks below her eyes. 
 
 Without moving her head to look at me, she
 
 ioo THE GLIMPSE 
 
 began to speak, and at the sound of her voice, her 
 sobs recommenced, breaking up her sentences. 
 
 " It's no use," she whimpered. " I couldn't stand 
 it any longer ... I couldn't stand it. . . . You don't 
 know. . . . You think you know everything, but you 
 don't. ... A woman like me can't do without love. 
 . . . I've stood it too long . . . getting up in the 
 morning with the feeling that no man in the world 
 was thinking about me — was neither happy nor un- 
 happy because of me. . . . How many years have I 
 stood that ? . . . Do you suppose I got used to it ? 
 . . . Never ! And I never should ! Not if I was a 
 hundred ! . . . You don't understand what my life 
 is. . . . You don't understand life at all." 
 
 "I understand what common-sense is," I said 
 calmly. "What good do you think you're doing by 
 talking like a schoolgirl ? Damn it ! You're thirty- 
 four. You know as well as I do that I've always 
 done the decent thing by you — and am / blaming 
 you for gallivanting with your friend the Captain ? 
 It's your affair. What good can you possibly do by 
 talking about it — at any rate to me ? " 
 
 " Decent thing by me ! " she exclaimed, before I 
 had finished speaking. "Never! You never did 
 the decent thing by me! You never thought 
 of any soul on this earth except yourself. . . . 
 You never really thought of anything but your 
 work."
 
 IN THE STUDY 101 
 
 "Well," I put in, with a short condescending 
 laugh. " Work is work ! " 
 
 " What's your work to me ? " she went on. " You 
 took me. And then you left me to take care of 
 myself while you worked. Even when you were 
 kissing me you thought about your work. Do you 
 think I couldn't see it in your eyes ? Your work 
 was more important to you than any woman — any 
 human creature. . . . Work's all very well for you. 
 . . . But even you only worked because something 
 made you. . . . Everybody doesn't want to work. . . . 
 It depends how you're born. . . . What's your work 
 to me? . . . What good did it ever do to me ? . . . 
 It isn't I who 'm famous. ... It isn't I that people 
 bow down to, and that the newspapers talk about. . . . 
 I haven't got a great brain, and what's more I don't 
 want one. All that I want is for someone to be 
 thinking about me ! " 
 
 "I didn't know you were so desperately miser- 
 able," I said. "You've had everything you've asked 
 for, anyhow, for a long time now ! " (" The worst of 
 women," I reflected crossly, " is that they make you 
 talk when you don't want to.") I added aloud, in 
 spite of myself: "I always did everything I could 
 for you." 
 
 " I haven't had everything I wanted ! " she cried. 
 "And you never did do everything you could for me! 
 , . . You never sacrificed a single half-hour of your
 
 io2 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 work for me! . . . Because you honestly thought 
 with your fearful selfishness that your work was 
 more important than your wife." 
 
 I shrugged my shoulders. She did not shift her 
 gaze from the door communicating with the bed- 
 room. Her right hand drummed hysterically on the 
 desk. I looked away, and my eye caught the little 
 masterpiece of Johnnie Hulse, which hung near the 
 door where I stood. 
 
 "You'd much better not excite yourself," I mur- 
 mured. " You'd much better go to bed — instead of 
 stopping here." 
 
 "And there's another thing," she burst out, 
 ignoring my advice. " Supposing Johnnie and I do 
 care for each other ? . . . Whose fault is that ? " 
 
 " No doubt mine," I said frigidly. 
 
 " Not yours, and not anybody's ! ... If you fall 
 in love, you fall in love, and there you are ! . . . When 
 you fell in love with me — who asked you to ? You 
 couldn't help it. Neither could I. . . . We just did 
 what we had to do. . . . And when we didn't care 
 for each other any more, we couldn't help that either ! 
 If either you or I had been married when we first 
 met, would that have made any difference ? Would 
 you have left me alone ? You know it wouldn't, but 
 you haven't got the moral pluck to say so. Nobody 
 preached at you when you had rheumatic fever and 
 made everyone miserable for weeks and weeks. . . .
 
 IN THE STUDY 103 
 
 Nobody said you ought to be ashamed of yourself 
 for having rheumatic fever, because of course you 
 couldn't help it. . . . Well, can Johnnie and I help 
 it? . . . It's just luck if you don't happen to fall in 
 love with someone you oughtn't to fall in love with. 
 And naturally it's always the lucky people who 
 preach 1 " 
 
 " I'm not preaching," I said politely. "You've got 
 your religion — I expect you know what you're about." 
 "Don't talk about my religion," she protested. 
 " That's another thing. You always make fun of my 
 religion. And if I were to die now, I should die in 
 mortal sin, because I didn't go to mass last Sunday. 
 I saw him instead. . . . And that's what love is to 
 me ! And I don't care if I do die in mortal sin. . . . 
 But you don't understand. You can't. You're too 
 cold. . . . You only understand semiquavers." 
 
 I smiled, and moved towards the drawing-room. 
 " I ought never to have left it," I said to myself. It 
 seemed inconceivable that only a few minutes earlier 
 I had meant to be kissing this Inez. 
 
 "I'll leave you," I said. "All I have to say, and 
 all I shall say, is that I should have thought you or 
 Captain Hulse would have had more common-sense, 
 to put it no higher. Not to mention the scandal, 
 you're simply making misery for yourselves. And 
 the funny thing is that you know it. You aren't 
 such a fool as not to be able to see that. And I'm
 
 io 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 certain he isn't ! And what are you doing it for ? — 
 Because you can't help it ? . . . You'll excuse me 
 saying it, but you make me sicj< with your infantile 
 arguments. Sick ! " 
 
 I could feel anger rising within me again. And 
 I scorned both of them intensely for their vulgar 
 disregard of their own dignity, and of that decency 
 the maintenance of which was to me perhaps the 
 most sacred of civilised obligations. I turned. 
 
 " Morrice ! " 
 
 She now looked at me. 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I've never — Johnnie and I — you know what I 
 mean " 
 
 " Been his mistress ? " 
 
 " Never ! I swear it ! " She gave a grandiose 
 gesture. 
 
 " I'd sooner you'd be his mistress than be melo- 
 dramatic," I replied. "What do I care whether 
 you've been his mistress or not ? I neither believe 
 you nor disbelieve you. Besides, to-morrow, at 
 Brondesbury, at three . . ." 
 
 I raised my hands. The sarcasm in them cut 
 her to fury. 
 
 "You think yourself very clever," she almost 
 shrieked. " I wish you could hear Johnnie make fun 
 of you, just for five minutes ! Oh ! I wish you 
 could!"
 
 IN THE STUDY 105 
 
 The immense and cruel injustice of which I was 
 the victim rilled me with a cyclonic resentment. I 
 had a tremendous desire to snatch down Hulse's 
 painting from the wall and smash it to pieces. But 
 I refrained. I controlled myself. The picture was 
 beautiful, masterful. Better possibly for me if I had 
 not kept such a rein on myself! Better if I had 
 exploded ! I moved further towards the drawing- 
 room ; that is to say, I meant to move, but did not. 
 Then I meant to speak — it was an appeal for help — 
 but did not. Then I was conscious of the most acute 
 physical pain, and I fell to the floor. Only after- 
 wards did I learn that this intolerable suffocating, 
 stabbing pain was caused by a paroxysm of the 
 heart
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE DOCTOR 
 
 " Send for the doctor," I implored her, speaking in 
 gasps with the greatest difficulty. " I'm dying." 
 
 I knew that some great physical disaster had 
 happened to me and that I was dying. I knew that 
 I could not bear for very long the intense, almost 
 incredible pains that had seized me about the region 
 of my heart. There were loud reverberations in my 
 head. 
 
 Inez's face was transfigured by alarm. Her first 
 impulse was of course to raise me from the ground. 
 " No, no ! " I begged, feebly, like a tortured child. 
 Our relations were now utterly changed. I had for- 
 gotten everything except my bodily organism, which 
 alone interested me. I had no strength, and she had 
 much strength. I would have descended to any 
 moral abjection in order to persuade her not to use 
 her strength in ways contrary to my instinct of self- 
 preservation. And that instinct was to remain exactly 
 as I was. I was supporting the upper part of my 
 body on my two arms, my face being a few inches 
 
 106
 
 THE DOCTOR 107 
 
 from the carpet and my legs twisted under me. I 
 breathed very quickly, in short breaths. I was afraid 
 to breathe. All my muscles were tense in the effort 
 of bearing the pain. Rapidly, wildly, between two 
 breaths, I despairingly begged : 
 
 "Doctor!" 
 
 She hesitated, and then, rising from her bent 
 posture, ran from the room. The pain extended down 
 my left arm. But I dared not move. I could hear 
 her at the telephone, speaking in a low, excited 
 tone. 
 
 "Yes, yes," I whispered to myself. "That's it. 
 That's it. Ouick ! Ouick ! I can't stand it much 
 longer." 
 
 I heard Inez saying at the telephone : " Is that 
 you, doctor ? . . . Yes, at once. ... In a cab, please. 
 His heart, — something." 
 
 " That's right ! " I whispered to myself. " He's at 
 home. What luck! What luck ! " 
 
 A door shut sharply, and there was complete 
 silence. I guessed that Inez was calling the servants, 
 who had probably gone to bed. When she returned 
 to me, I lifted a little my humiliated head. The 
 pain had slightly diminished ; but it was still what 
 is commonly called intolerable. 
 
 " I must sit in a chair," I entreated. She was 
 omnipotent. She had me at her mercy. My eyes 
 appealed to her like the eyes of a slave.
 
 io8 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 "Better lie down," she suggested, with the in- 
 tensely irritating wise kindliness of all-powerful all- 
 wisdom. 
 
 "No, no!" I besought. " Easy-chair ! ... I 
 must lean forward." 
 
 She assisted me to an easy-chair. I sank into it, 
 and with my right arm pressed against its arm, I 
 leaned forward over it, sideways. The pain increased, 
 and then diminished again, irregularly. My breath- 
 ing continued to be very rapid and shallow. 
 
 " Some brandy ? " she suggested. 
 
 I shook my head. " Wait ! wait ! " I whispered 
 impatiently. I could scarcely believe that the pain 
 was lessening. The fact seemed too good to be true. 
 But it was true. I emitted an " Ah ! " 
 
 Inez kneeled in front of me, and held my left 
 hand. 
 
 " Is he coming ? " I whispered. 
 
 She nodded encouragingly. 
 
 " Good ! " I whispered. But I was not in the 
 slightest degree reassured. I knew that I was dying. 
 I had no hope of the doctor. But I wanted to die 
 properly, with the minimum of torture and of 
 ignorant clumsiness. 
 
 " Bring me a mirror ! " I said. 
 
 As the pain slowly decreased, her moral empire 
 over me decreased. I did not feel so dependent 
 upon her.
 
 THE DOCTOR 109 
 
 " A mirror ? " she questioned. 
 
 " Yes," I said. " Hand-glass — anything. I want 
 to see myself. . . . Go on ! " I added commandingly, 
 as she faltered. Owing to the extraordinary rever- 
 berations in my head, I could only hear indistinctly 
 even my own words. 
 
 She went into the bedroom and came back with 
 a hand-mirror, and held it so that I could see my 
 face. My face was pale, with a curious flush under 
 the wild eyes, and glistening with perspiration. My 
 hands too perspired. Yet I was chilled to the marrow. 
 I gazed long at my image, at the poor, drawn, beaten^ 
 condemned, undignified figure, trying somehow to 
 rend its secret. Then I shut my eyes. 
 
 " He'll be here in a minute," said Inez. 
 
 " I'm so cold," I said. 
 
 She fetched an eiderdown from the bedroom, and 
 dropped it gently over my shoulders. 
 
 " That's better ! " I said. " I'm better, I'm a little 
 better." 
 
 So I was, but I only told her in order to prevent 
 her from worrying me with remedial offers. I desired 
 peace. Though I suffered less I still knew that I 
 was dying. The mirror had confirmed that. 
 
 The doctor arrived. His cab was not overset en 
 route, nor did anything untoward happen to him. 
 He arrived, and within a space of time which even 
 to me did not appear outrageously long. I caught
 
 no THE GLIMPSE 
 
 a murmur of voices outside the study door ; Inez 
 ran to the door ; and then the doctor entered, clad 
 in his eternal frock-coat, and trousers that were 
 round, like stove-pipes, quite ignoring the indispens- 
 able crease down the front. He was the doctor of 
 the days of my poverty, and had a fatiguing and 
 unremunerative suburban practice in the region of 
 Notting Hill. I had retained him in my prosperity, 
 partly because he was a very clever man of wide- 
 reaching experience, partly because I thought that 
 he ' understood ' me, partly because it appeared to me 
 unjust to deprive him of a client ; but chiefly because 
 I appreciated his dry, crackling, sardonic temperament 
 and his curt attitude to humanity. Moreover, he had 
 a secret passion for music. Once, when I had called 
 on him, we had played some pianoforte duets together. 
 If he could have concealed more effectually his 
 sardonic pleasure in the droll spectacle of mankind, 
 he would have been a wealthy practitioner, spending 
 half his time in an electric brougham. His ' bedside 
 manner' could only please a philosopher. He had 
 reached the age of fifty, and had lost nothing but 
 hair. He always spoke in an exceedingly quiet voice 
 — so quiet sometimes as to be scarcely audible. 
 
 I said nothing as he approached me, bending 
 down. 
 
 " Can you hear anything going on in your head ? " 
 he enquired mildly.
 
 THE DOCTOR in 
 
 " Can't hear anything else," I replied grimly. 
 
 "Urn!" 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Cardiac murmur," he said. He was examining 
 me. " No need to take your clothes off to examine 
 you. Could hear it a mile off. You'll be better 
 soon." Then he glanced at my wife through his 
 glittering gold-rimmed spectacles. " We shall want 
 some hot-water bags." 
 
 " I've had water put on to boil," said Inez. 
 
 " Got any mustard leaves ? " 
 
 She reflected. " Yes." 
 
 " Um ! You might let me have two or three hot- 
 water bags as quickly as you can and as hot as 
 you can." 
 
 " Must we get him to bed ? " she asked. 
 
 "No, no!" said the doctor. "He mustn't be 
 moved yet." 
 
 And I thought : " What did I tell you ? Didn't 
 I tell you ? " 
 
 Inez departed. The doctor felt my pulse. 
 
 "What is it?" I asked. 
 
 "A hundred and sixty," he answered after a 
 pause. 
 
 " I mean — what's up ? " 
 
 "Well," he said, "Angina pectoris. But you're 
 getting better every second. I suppose you've had a 
 shock, my boy ? What's happened ? "
 
 ii2 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I was disinclined to talk ; that is to say, I wished 
 only to ask questions, not to answer them. How- 
 ever, I said, gloomily and reluctantly : 
 
 " Oh ! A bally row ! " 
 
 " Urn ! " 
 
 Inez and Marion, after marvellously little delay, 
 came with the apparatus of mustard leaves and 
 hot-water bags. Marion, in deshabille, was wear- 
 ing a garment which I recognised as a cast-off 
 dressing-gown of Inez's. Her hair was loose. No 
 cap, no apron, no tight black frock ! But the 
 spectacles ! 
 
 "That will do, Marion, for the present," said 
 Inez. 
 
 "Yes'm." 
 
 In a moment I was enveloped in mustard leaves, 
 hot-water bags, and rugs. And then all the pain 
 vanished, and it was as though the whole pheno- 
 menon of pain had been removed from the entire 
 earth. The surcease, I thought, was not due to the 
 applications ; but by chance it coincided with them. 
 I leaned voluptuously back in the easy-chair, and 
 smiled at the doctor. In my smile was something 
 of sheepishness, for I was ashamed of the helpless, 
 brutish condition to which acute pain had abased me. 
 I had an instinctive idea that I owed an apology for 
 it to fellow-creatures. 
 
 " By God ! " I muttered. " By God ! "
 
 THE DOCTOR 113 
 
 The noise was reverberating in my head as loudly 
 as ever. 
 
 " Yes," said the doctor in response to my curiosity 
 — he was sitting down now — " I can tell you pre- 
 cisely. It's all due to that severe endocarditis you 
 had when you had your rheumatic fever. Dilated 
 heart means a weak heart. If you'd stopped in bed 
 longer the valves might have recovered themselves. 
 But you wouldn't stop in bed, and they were perma- 
 nently affected." 
 
 He did not say this with reproach or with regret. 
 He merely recorded, as an impartial observer, that 
 quite naturally, quite humanly, I had disregarded his 
 urgent advice to remain in bed a long time after the 
 rheumatic fever. 
 
 A quarter of an hour later he left, saying that I 
 might go to bed as soon as I felt equal to the effort, 
 and that there was nothing else to be done. He 
 arranged with Inez that Marion should dress and 
 follow him to the surgery for a cardiac tonic which he 
 would prepare. 
 
 My wife and I then sat silent together. 
 
 In another half-hour I announced that I could 
 and should go to bed. On her arm I walked easily 
 to the bedroom. I obstinately and even angrily 
 insisted upon undressing myself. I would only allow 
 her to take from me the various articles of attire as 
 I shed them. Yet I knew that I was wrong in thus 
 
 I
 
 ii 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 unnecessarily wasting my strength, and the clumsiness 
 of my movements was remarkable. . . . Then I was 
 in bed, lying on my back. The noise in my head 
 continued. I remained sure of my approaching 
 death.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE NIGHT 
 
 All had happened so swiftly that the mind was, as 
 it were, left breathless. I could see this mental state 
 in my wife's face. 
 
 " Better go to bed now," I suggested quietly ; my 
 voice was fatigued and feeble. 
 
 She pursed out her lips, and raised her eyebrows, 
 at the same time slightly shaking her head, in the 
 expression of a negative. I comprehended that she 
 had endeavoured to make this refusal kindly and per- 
 suasive, and that she wished to prove to me the 
 devotion which my condition had inspired in her. 
 Naturally we could not converse, even had I been 
 sufficiently strong and sufficiently interested in life 
 to converse. Our acute self-consciousness would in 
 any case have prevented us from an exchange of 
 ideas. Her confession, her bitterness, my cruel irony, 
 lay freshly between us. Impossible for us to have 
 been natural ! What could we have said ? We were 
 none the less bound together by my sudden physical 
 danger and need. She had to watch over me, I had 
 
 "5
 
 n6 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 to depend upon her — and we could not even look 
 each other in the face ! She remained at the foot of 
 my bed, not pouring hope into me from brave affec- 
 tionate eyes, but with glance averted, troubled and 
 guilty. At length she sat down on a chair. I could 
 not see her head, but parts of her ribboned dress 
 were visible to me. I seemed to doze. Then I 
 heard gentle movements. She was changing her 
 tea-gown for a plain dressing-gown. Her gestures 
 had recovered all their grace. 
 
 I pitied her. My rancour, and the sense of my 
 deep injury, had expired. As I lay in a sort of 
 ecstasy of exhaustion, and watched her, I thought 
 that she and I had been together for innumerable 
 years, that we had been intensely intimate in very 
 varied circumstances, that each had a profound 
 knowledge of the other's character, and that all was 
 now finished ; the vivid, lovely, and mournful chapter 
 closed ! . . . A melancholy sweet and languorous as 
 the summer night impregnated me. I found a faint 
 pleasure in it. 
 
 And as I lazily watched her I thought : " I am 
 leaving you, and I am leaving you to unhappiness. 
 You will have money in plenty, you will be free, but 
 you yourself will be the continual source of your own 
 unhappiness." I pictured a future for her, with 
 Captain Hulse for example. That idyll could never 
 endure. Use would inevitably stale it till it withered.
 
 THE NIGHT 117 
 
 And then what ? Another idyll ? And then what ? 
 Then the dreaded approach of middle age ; the 
 decadence of that wondrous body — supreme disaster ! 
 What tragic mournings were in store for her ! What 
 tears, what humiliations ! At forty, without the 
 strong moral support of a man who understands 
 her deeply, and cares for her, such a woman as Inez 
 is worse than dead. And I felt, despite her fierce 
 accusation that I had never understood her, that no 
 one would ever grasp the basis of her character as 
 I had grasped it, and that no one would be capable 
 of being so tolerant as I could have been — in the 
 future. . . . And then I pictured a different future 
 for her. She might, in a paroxysm of contrition, 
 definitely repulse Johnnie. She might argue with 
 herself, in her theatrical, sentimental way, that they 
 two could not link their hands across my tomb. She 
 might become a nurse, or even a nun. Yes, a nun, 
 fervent in prostrations ! I saw her amid conventual 
 gardens, endeavouring to convince herself that she 
 was content, and all the while the desire for opera- 
 boxes and jewels and men burning her soul like 
 quicklime ! I saw her in old age, fantastic and 
 ridiculous ! And it seemed to me that I alone could 
 have saved her. 
 
 These thoughts were not acute enough to be 
 painful. I was too tired, too resigned, to feel acutely. 
 But they gently emphasised my sadness.
 
 n8 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 A timid knock at the door. The spectacled girl 
 entered. This singular, baffling damsel was now 
 again fully clothed in her conventional black and 
 starched white, even to the cap and the cuffs. She 
 had brought the medicine, with glass and spoon, on 
 a salver. Inez deciphered the label on the bottle 
 and looked at the spoon. 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " I shall sit up, m'm," Marion whispered. 
 
 "I tell you what you might do," Inez whispered 
 back. " You might rest on the settee in the drawing- 
 room. Tell cook she can go to bed." 
 
 Marion bowed to the command and withdrew. 
 
 I objected to the medicine, but I knew that I 
 should be compelled to take it ; and I did so, — a 
 complicated business. When it was over, I murmured 
 to Inez : 
 
 " Mirror ! " 
 
 I was careful to say ' mirror,' instead of ' glass,' 
 lest she might think I wanted the medicine glass, 
 and fatiguing explanations might ensue. 
 
 "Oh no!" she said mildly. "You don't really 
 want that again." 
 
 "Yes, yes." 
 
 She had to bring it, and hold it above my eyes, 
 as I lay gazing perpendicularly upwards. I saw the 
 terribly drawn, apprehensive face, with its waxen 
 skin, once more. I thought : " They too, since they
 
 THE NIGHT 119 
 
 see this face, must know that I am dying." The 
 reverberations in my head had ceased. 
 
 She removed the mirror. 
 
 A moment afterwards I felt her startled eye upon 
 me. And I perceived that my hands were picking 
 aimlessly at the edge of the sheet. "That is just 
 what dying people do ! " I thought. " I had not noticed 
 what I was doing ! How curious ! " I ceased picking 
 at the sheet. 
 
 Then a blank ! A long expanse of time ! And 
 then I became aware, gradually, that I was after all 
 not in my own flat, and that, ill as I was, I must go 
 home instantly. And I tried to go home. I insisted 
 on going home. But inconceivably foolish persons 
 were preventing me. I talked very rapidly, now loud, 
 now soft, uttering the most extraordinary matters, 
 and at intervals stopping in my frenzied discourse 
 to clarify obscure but important points, such as my 
 view of Johnnie Hulse's painting. Then I fought 
 for liberty to go home. I fought ferociously. But I 
 was gripped by two of these inconceivably foolish 
 persons. It was two to one. Then I was shocked 
 to discover that I was writhing on my own bed, and 
 that Inez and Marion, on either side of the bed, 
 were holding me by force of arms ! And how 
 athletic they were ! But they breathed heavily ! 
 
 I yielded, sinking back. 
 
 Another blank.
 
 i2o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 And I heard a voice, somehow familiar, saying : 
 
 "He may or he mayn't. We can do nothing 
 else." 
 
 And then, later, the same voice : 
 
 '-' It's because the eyes themselves are turned 
 upwards, like into the forehead ; the pupil is gone 
 up out of sight and so you can only see the white. 
 He may be like that for " 
 
 The voice stopped. It was the doctor's voice. 
 Strange ! They had been telephoning, then, and 
 waiting, and the doctor had arrived again, and come 
 into the room, and I had known nothing ! Marion 
 stood at attention in a corner of the room. I stirred. 
 The doctor came towards me with a faint smile. 
 Then I noticed another strange phenomenon. Some- 
 thing hot, damp, and stinging, was pressing against 
 the calves of my legs. They had uncovered me, and 
 put poultices there, and covered me ; and I had 
 known nothing ! 
 
 " Here ! " murmured the doctor persuasively. 
 
 He put a small glass to my lips. 
 
 I smiled. It was the smile of one sardonic 
 philosopher to another. 
 
 After an interval the doctor departed, and Inez 
 followed him out of the room. Marion remained to 
 watch, respectfully glancing at me from moment to 
 moment. I was fully conscious and in my right 
 mind, but ineffably weak. Then Inez silently
 
 THE NIGHT 121 
 
 returned, and, at a gesture from her, Marion withdrew 
 silently, leaving the door ajar. 
 
 Inez approached my bed. I let my head slide 
 slowly rightwards, so that my right cheek was on 
 the pillow, and my eye met hers. My right hand, 
 which lay on the sheet, moved scarce perceptibly 
 towards her. She took it, and dropped to her knees, 
 as I had once seen her drop to her knees before an 
 altar at the Oratory of S. Philip Neri, and her eye 
 was level with mine. 
 
 " Did he tell you it's all up ? " I questioned her. 
 My voice seemed like the wraith of a voice. 
 
 She shook her head, as it were by force of will. 
 And I saw moisture gathering in her bright feverish 
 eyes. It rose and rose, and then a shower of glisten- 
 ing drops burst and ran down her exquisite, pouting 
 cheeks. This was one of the most beautiful sights 
 that I ever witnessed.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 TOWARDS OBLIVION 
 
 BETWEEN the twin beds was a small square table, 
 and on the table stood an electric lamp with a green 
 silk shade. The circle of light limited by the shade 
 included the edge of my bed and Inez' face as she 
 knelt. Beyond the confines of the circle, the whole 
 chamber was in gloom. But I could vaguely dis- 
 tinguish the contours and the tints of all the beautiful 
 furniture in the room, and I could recall the fineness 
 of the engravings and photogravures on the un- 
 patterned walls. And there was Inez' long-plumed 
 hat perched on the silver candlestick ! The colour of 
 the eiderdown, which had been drawn away some- 
 what and cast over the foot of the bed, was a reddish 
 purple, braided with green : it showed richly, amid 
 the general severity of tone, like a piece of rhetoric. 
 I mention these matters because I then savoured 
 them with pleasure — a feeling faint but agreeable. 
 I thought that, in dying, it was an advantage to be 
 surrounded by phenomena that could not wound — 
 could only soothe — the glazing eye. 
 
 122
 
 TOWARDS OBLIVION 123 
 
 Inez rose, looked at me for an instant, and moved 
 away into the gloom. She appeared to me extra- 
 ordinarily healthy, in a state of high physical efficiency. 
 She was like an incarnation of perfectly co-ordinated 
 energy. And I thought what a wonderful and lovely 
 thing was a sound body in good health 1 Although 
 this phenomenon too pleased me, it also inspired in 
 me a certain feeble resentment. I, ruined, did in fact 
 resent the active competence of that organised frame. 
 It struck me as insolent. And yet a few hours 
 previously my own body had displayed the same 
 insolence of power. And my undoing was due to an 
 irrational and disobedient impatience after rheumatic 
 fever a year ago! I would, then, in my growing 
 strength, quit my bed. And now, as a consequence, 
 I could not quit it, should never quit it. Curiously 
 strange, the inexorability of nature ! 
 
 Exactly opposite the foot of my bed was the 
 door leading to the study. This door was wide open, 
 and the vista of the study, ending in a French 
 window, met my eyes when they came to rest in the 
 natural position of repose. No lamp burned in the 
 study. There were dim hints of glossy reflections, 
 and the window made an oblong of bluish twilight. 
 The window was ajar ; its two wings stirred slightly 
 from time to time, and the white lace curtains stirred, 
 bellying capriciously and then flattening out, accord- 
 ing to the mild, warm gusts of the July night.
 
 i2 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Through the upper part of the window I could 
 discern a patch of silver in the sky, of an exquisite 
 quality of colour. I had previously observed this 
 patch from the balcony of the drawing-room, when 
 I had looked down at the departure of John and 
 Mary. It was the pale-gleaming vestige of a mag- 
 nificent sunset, reluctant to expire, islanded amid 
 dark clouds in the higher heavens. I thought : 
 "That silver cannot burn there through the night. 
 It must fade." And I waited for it to fade. And 
 it would not fade. I closed my eyes for immense 
 periods, and looked again, expecting the radiance 
 to be gone. But it was always there, making the 
 window wonderful. 
 
 Everything was still, silent, enchanted. And out 
 of the silence, like bubbles floating upwards to the 
 surface of a pool and breaking there, came the 
 solemn tick-tick of the antique clock in the vestibule, 
 dominating the subdued life of the flat, and counting 
 eternity. I thought of the cook, sleeping I knew 
 not where, and the enigmatic Marion stretched on a 
 settee in the dark drawing-room (a woman, beneath 
 that tight black frock), and Inez, strong and beautiful, 
 indistinctly near me somewhere in the green-shadowed 
 chamber. 
 
 I saw my hand twitching and toying with the 
 edge of the sheet again, and I stopped it. 
 
 It was a pity that the spell that brooded over the
 
 TOWARDS OBLIVION 125 
 
 flat would be broken by my death ! A pity that the 
 subdued and apprehensive life of the flat could not 
 remain thus for ever in its beautiful immobility! 
 The thought of the harsh and ugly disturbances 
 inseparable from a funeral, and of the probable 
 evacuation of the flat, and of the invasion of its chill 
 emptiness by loud-voiced, insincerely-disparaging 
 flat-hunters, — this wounded and worried me. How- 
 ever, there would be plenty of money for Inez. She 
 would be put to no shifts. . . . Strange that none of 
 these people believed that my immediate death was 
 sure ! They all' hoped, with a genuine hope that was 
 nigh faith, for my recovery. Even the doctor had 
 faith. Otherwise my sister would have been sum- 
 moned. But they feared. I alone saw with certainty 
 the future. And I alone was calm and untroubled. 
 
 Another long period seemed to elapse. But 
 probably my conceptions of time were seriously 
 falsified. I heard the clock ticking ; yet, though its 
 habit was to chime the quarters, I never heard it 
 strike. Probably also I had a very inadequate notion 
 of the complexity of the treatment to which I was 
 being subjected. I seemed to have disconnected 
 glimpses of intricate operations which kept Inez 
 busy about my bed. Once, after having adjusted 
 the coverings, she murmured to me : 
 
 " Are you comfortable ? " 
 
 And I endeavoured to nod. I must have
 
 i26 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 succeeded in nodding. Then my head slipped to 
 one side. 
 
 All I wished was to be left quiescent in the peace 
 which was enwrapping me in heavier and heavier 
 folds. I had no regrets for the past, and no qualms 
 about the future. My life did not pass before me in 
 a phantasmagoria of self-judging. I had no satis- 
 faction concerning things done, nor did I grieve for 
 things undone; nor did my soul weep over lost 
 opportunities. I did not wander in the remote 
 caverns of infancy, unvisited for decades. I saw my 
 career in no new light. I was unaware of any 
 remorse. The solemnity of the crisis in my immor- 
 tality scarcely oppressed me at all. I thought : " I 
 am going ! I am going ! It is just as well ! What a 
 cutting of the knot ! Let me depart ! " Did I say 
 I had no qualms for the future ? Scarcely true ! The 
 great void of my indifference was shot through at 
 intervals by thin lancinating flashes of fear, of an 
 unknown terror. . . . After all, if the passage into the 
 new consciousness on the other side of death should 
 somehow correspond in dread with the legendary 
 superstitions of mankind ! If the mighty power 
 waiting beyond the horizon should after all be vin- 
 dictive, should even be but scientifically just ! . . . 
 Then the flash was gone. I thought : " I shall soon 
 know." And there was a certain feeble adventurous 
 nonchalance in my mood, — the insolence, at once
 
 TOWARDS OBLIVION 127 
 
 titanic and pert, of the human soul before an 
 unimaginable danger ! 
 
 These sensations that I describe were unimpor- 
 tant in the sum of my consciousness, which mainly- 
 consisted in a fierce physical egotism caused by 
 exhaustion of the body. My body had my brain in 
 subjection. I knew that my face was not drawn and 
 anxious now. I knew that it could express nothing 
 but the intense need of repose. All other considera- 
 tions receded. I must rest. Sleep, and a state 
 profounder than sleep ! Leave me, intruders, tor- 
 turers ! And if you will not, I defy you to disturb 
 me. I sink, as it were, downwards on a canine sigh. 
 By my side the lamp throws its bright ring on the 
 carpet. Far in front the mysterious window shimmers 
 in vague translucent silver. . . . All ! . . . The man 
 lost in the snow-veiled Alpine pass, seized by 
 slumber as by an opiate, inscnsately fighting his 
 rescuers for the incomparable bliss of oblivion, — 
 behold there my image !
 
 BOOK II 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 AWAKING 
 
 This is what I awoke to : 
 
 I was looking at my bed. My brain at first 
 worked with much difficulty. It reasoned very slowly. 
 Nevertheless, the argument was convincing : "lam 
 looking at the bed. Therefore I am not in the bed." 
 I saw the bed framed in a small oblong, of which the 
 greater length was vertical. This oblong was the 
 doorway between the bedroom and my study. Hence 
 I had arrived, by some means, in the study. I was, 
 in fact, near the open window. I had a slight sensa- 
 tion of chilliness, though I knew that the night was 
 
 warm. 
 
 A man lay on the bed. He was a big man, as 
 I could judge from the outlines of his shoulders under 
 the sheet. And his head was large. His face showed 
 white ; the eyes were wide open and staring fixedly 
 at the ceiling; the lower jaw had fallen, limp, so 
 that the mouth was open in a senile, rather idiotic 
 
 128
 
 AWAKING 129 
 
 way. A man of forty or so. I was prevented by the 
 intervening foot of the bed from seeing more than 
 the upper half of what lay on it, and by the dimen- 
 sions of the doorway from seeing anything in the 
 bedroom except the bed. I heard a rush of foot- 
 steps, and then the electric light over the bed was 
 turned on, illuminating crudely the face of the man, 
 whose eyelids, however, did not blink. Then my 
 wife appeared within the field of my vision, with the 
 hand-mirror, which she polished carefully on a corner 
 of the eiderdown. Thereupon she held it downwards 
 over the mouth and nostrils of the man for a long 
 time, and then examined it, first under the ceiling- 
 light and afterwards under the lamp on the little 
 table. Parts of her — her head, an arm, a portion of 
 skirt — were continually passing in and out of the 
 oblong. She was extremely agitated. I scarcely 
 recognised her by her features. 
 
 Nor, though it may astound, did I recognise the 
 man on the bed. An appreciable period elapsed 
 before I even began vaguely to realise that the body 
 on the bed was mine. I had never seen myself save 
 in a glass, which puts the left to the right and the 
 right to the left, thus changing all the relations of 
 the features. I had to reason out the identity of the 
 body. It could be no other ; therefore it was 
 mine. 
 
 And then the idea shot through me — not as a 
 
 K
 
 130 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 result of ratiocination, but as a swift fundamental 
 perception of the instinct : 
 
 " I'm dead ! This is being dead ! I've died ! " 
 
 Terror clutched and loosed me ; retired and then 
 approached slowly from all sides to possess me. I 
 felt the start, the shiver, the momentary cold creep- 
 ing of the skin on the spine — an instant of ineffable 
 anguish ; then numbness ; then the gradual return 
 of anguish. A sailor marooned on a desert islet, and 
 newly aware of what had happened to him, might 
 feebly conceive my state. Indescribable ! Sickening ! 
 
 I still had some sort of a physical organism, 
 patterned apparently on the old, but differing in 
 deep ways which, however, I was not curious enough 
 to consider. I was still I. It was the relic on the 
 bed that was not I. 
 
 My wife, after disappearing, came back into the 
 oblong with a pair of scissors. She cut a hole in the 
 pillow and drew from it a feather of down, which she 
 cautiously poised on the lips of that body. The 
 down did not tremble. Then she bared the breast 
 of the body on the bed, and, bending, laid her ear 
 upon the region of the heart. I could see her eyes 
 blinking as she intensely listened. She was looking 
 directly at me. The bedroom was brilliantly lit, and 
 the study derived considerable light from it. I ought 
 to have been quite plain, as an object. Even had 
 the study been dark I ought to have been notable
 
 AWAKING 131 
 
 as a silhouette against the silvery luminance of the 
 window. Yet Inez did not see me. 
 
 I wanted to cry out : " Inez ! " But I could make 
 no sound. Nor could I move. That is to say, I 
 could move a few inches in any direction, up or 
 down, forward, backward, sideways, as easily as one 
 moves in water, but I could not quit the spot where 
 I was. 
 
 Inez straightened herself, gave a brief sob, and 
 stood undecided by the bed. I endeavoured to 
 attract her attention by signs, — by I knew not what, 
 by the violence of my desire to communicate with 
 her. But I could do nothing. Once she turned 
 sharply, as if startled, and looked straight at me 
 through the doorway. I strove now more frantically 
 than ever to intercept that glance. Useless ! She 
 did not see me. She would not see me. 
 
 She passed out of the oblong. I then noticed 
 a form floating over the bed. It resembled mc — it 
 resembled my body — in shape, but it was of a pale 
 greyish heliotrope colour. It appeared to float as 
 if in water. " My God ! " I thought. " How often 
 am I to be multiplied ? " I was aghast with horror, 
 consternation, panic, and an awful bewilderment. 
 I could explain nothing to myself. I was terrorised 
 and lost. And, moreover, the floating imitation of 
 me was obscene ; the body below it was obscene. 
 Understand me : when I say ' obscene,' I mean
 
 i32 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 completely offensive and disastrous to the sight : I 
 use the word in no limited sense. It was fatally shock- 
 ing that that disgusting relic and that uncanny fluid 
 shape should be there between the homely, earthly, 
 comprehensible, decent electric light and the Hepple- 
 white bedstead. 
 
 I thought : 
 
 " Dead ? Yes. What ' they ' call dead ! " 
 
 But I knew then that there was no such catas- 
 trophe as corresponded with your notion of death. 
 There was, however, something more formidable, 
 which we had not suspected : the forced simultaneous 
 perception of disparate phenomena. This is the 
 most shattering, if not the most desolating, experience 
 that the universe holds. Believe me ! 
 
 I heard the voice of Inez : 
 
 " Marion ! " 
 
 It was a voice charged with significance, and it 
 told Marion the great fact. I heard a sleepy groan 
 in the drawing-room, and dull heavy movements, 
 becoming hastier. And then both women appeared 
 within the oblong. Marion still wore her black 
 frock and she was mechanically tying her apron 
 behind. They gazed at that body on the bed, and 
 at each other, and at the body again. They gazed 
 at that body, commiserating and awestruck, as if it 
 was myself that they were gazing at. Neither spoke. 
 I wanted to rouse them to their error, so stupid,
 
 AWAKING 13: 
 
 grotesque, and tragic. But I was helpless. I was in 
 the most desperate need of sympathy, of moral 
 succour ; and they ignored me, spilling their facile 
 tears on a mass of obscene and senseless matter. 
 They were blind to such a point that they could not 
 even discern the third ' me ' floating idly above their 
 heads on a level with Brangwyn's large etching of 
 London Bridge. 
 
 Inez told what she had done. Marion ventured 
 to bend a little closer to the body. 
 
 " I have heard," she said deferentially, " that if 
 you put a full glass of water on the chest you can 
 tell for sure. But perhaps you wouldn't care to, 
 m m. 
 
 By this time her apron was duly fastened. 
 
 First Inez and then the servant passed out of the 
 oblong, and I caught the sound of water being 
 poured from one vessel into another. And Inez 
 reappeared holding at arm's length, and balancing 
 with precautions, a tumbler of water. 
 
 "Turn down the sheet," she commanded. 
 
 " Oh, ma'am ! I never dare ! " exclaimed Marion, 
 and burst fairly into hysteric sobs. 
 
 With a slight gesture of scornful superiority, Inez 
 deposited the glass on the corner of the table, turned 
 down the sheet, took the glass again, and gingerly 
 lowered it on to the chest of that body. I could 
 see from their faces that both women imagined
 
 i 3 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 themselves to be engaged in an operation dreadful 
 and momentous. To me it was merely absurd in an 
 exasperating degree. The ridiculousness of their 
 manoeuvre affronted my sense of propriety. From 
 either side of the bed they stared as if spellbound 
 at the preposterous tumbler lodged on that fleshly 
 residue. I had never since my youth been able to 
 envisage any act whatsoever as blasphemous. When 
 people talked of blasphemy, I could never even 
 fancifully reproduce their feelings in myself. Yet, 
 then, the figures of Inez and the maid, and the 
 decaying mass between them, and the meaningless 
 tumbler, constituted for me, in some way, a blasphe- 
 mous tableau vivant : the most monstrous spectacle 
 that I had ever seen. 
 
 " No ! Nothing ! " Inez breathed. 
 
 There was not the slightest vibration on the 
 surface of the tumbler, which she at length removed. 
 
 They were obsessed, both of them, by the majesty 
 and solemnity of death. So much was to be seen 
 in their impressionable faces, and audible in their 
 voices, and visible again in their movements. They 
 felt themselves to be alone in the flat with the dead, 
 and they looked timidly askance at shadows, and 
 started at faint unanticipated noises. Obviously the 
 whole flat was alive for them with the little creeping 
 presences that are supposed to circle round a corpse. 
 And yet I could not force into their consciousness the
 
 AWAKING 135 
 
 fact that I was behind them, helpless and desolate. 
 And they remained extraordinarily unaware of the 
 weird counterfeit floating above them. I was in 
 despair of my impotence, and outraged by the 
 obstinacy of their error. They deemed themselves 
 alone in the flat with the corpse ; but they were alone 
 in the flat with me ; the corpse was utterly negligible ; 
 the corpse did not exist. And they were wasting 
 upon it their sympathy, their respect, their awe. 
 This was what most deeply perturbed me. 
 
 " I'd better telephone for the doctor, m'm, hadn't 
 I ? " whispered Marion. Terror was gripping them 
 tighter. 
 
 " What's the use ? " murmured Inez. " It would 
 only spoil the poor man's night for nothing. He 
 warned me — to be prepared ! " 
 
 " Yes'm," said Marion meekly. " But that's what 
 doctors are for. By rights he ought to be fetched." 
 
 She had her way. 
 
 I heard her presently enunciating with trembling 
 distinctness the figures of a telephone-number. After 
 a time she came back to the bedroom and I heard 
 her say that the exchange said that they could get 
 no reply from the doctor. Silence. Neither Inez 
 nor Marion was now within the oblong. I noticed 
 that the greyish heliotrope apparition had risen 
 higher from the bed, so that part of it was already 
 hidden from me by the top of the doorway. Soon
 
 136 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 it vanished altogether, upwards out of my field of 
 vision. 
 
 Then I heard the chink of coins. 
 
 " Have you got a penny, Marion ? " 
 
 " A penny , ma'am ? " 
 
 " His eyes must be closed. I've only got 
 one." 
 
 No ! The spectacled girl had not got a penny. 
 My mood became bitterly ironic. There was a 
 considerable to-do about the second penny. And 
 I ached for them to finish the episode. I knew 
 that in a drawer of my desk lay over two-shillings' 
 worth of coppers ; for I had made a point of storing 
 coppers ; it was one of my little tricks of habit 
 always to have change adequate for every emergency. 
 Inez also knew of this store of copper. But in her 
 agitation she forgot it. So the difficulty of the other 
 penny persisted. I wanted to recall to her that 
 which she had forgotten. I longed with an intense 
 longing to direct her attention to the drawer. But 
 I could not. My impotence was appalling. 
 
 " I suppose I can use half-a-crown ? " I heard 
 Inez mutter doubtfully. 
 
 The girl ventured no reply to this suggestion. 
 
 Inez appeared within the oblong once more. She 
 had in one hand a handkerchief folded crosswise like 
 a muffler, and in the other two coins. She approached 
 that body, and again put her ear to its breast and
 
 AWAKING 137 
 
 listened intently, and again stared straight at me 
 with blinking, unseeing eyes. 
 
 Then she passed the handkerchief under that 
 fallen jaw, and so lifted the jaw, and tied the hand- 
 kerchief in a knot at the top of the head of that 
 body. There was a sob from the invisible maid. 
 And with her delicate fingers Inez drew down the 
 eyelids of that body, and put a penny on one and 
 half-a-crown on the other. And she straightened the 
 arms of that body. She seemed to be acquainted 
 with these singular rites much better than I was. 
 
 " I shall go round and tell cook, m'm," said the 
 determined voice of the maid. 
 
 I heard footsteps and the opening of a door 
 far off. 
 
 Suddenly Inez threw herself down by the bed, 
 before that body, as before an altar, and hid her 
 face in the eiderdown, and wept. 
 
 " I did love you ! I did love you ! " she cried in 
 stifled and broken tones. She was pouring out her 
 soul in a passionate ecstasy of repentant grief. But 
 she was pouring it out to that futile, obscene, and 
 negligible mass on the bed, that refuse no more 
 capable of response than a barrow-load of earth. It 
 was it that she loved. And I, alive, tingling, isolate, 
 and agonised for lack of human sympathy, stood 
 helpless and disregarded within a few feet of her, 
 in the twilight of the study.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 SOUNDS OF NIGHT 
 
 Now, as, slightly waving like a stalk, I stood by the 
 window, a feeling of acute and frightful loneliness 
 enveloped me as it were in an icy sheet. I was solitary 
 in the universe. I was invisible and I was forgotten. 
 I had no place in the world, no share in life, nothing 
 that was mine. The purposes of nature had ejected 
 me from humanity. It was as though humanity 
 were a fortified city, and the gates had been shut 
 on me, and I was baffled by unscalable smooth 
 walls, beating against their stone with my hands. 
 Any physical torture would have been preferable 
 to the horror caused by this feeling of ostracised 
 solitude. It devastated my soul, laying waste the 
 whole of it. 
 
 Marion came within the oblong of my vision, and, 
 without a word, put her hands on Inez, and gently 
 raised her up from the bedside and led her away 
 beyond my view. And Inez yielded unresisting. 
 Here were two human beings, sympathetic, mutually 
 comprehending, relying on each other, sure of each 
 
 138
 
 SOUNDS OF NIGHT 139 
 
 other. And the tie of living humanity which joined 
 them seemed to me to be the most beautiful and 
 the profoundest that could be conceived. The 
 simple fact that they were alive together surpassed 
 in importance every other fact in their relationship. 
 
 The next moment the electric light was extin- 
 guished in the bedroom. But in the diffused clarity 
 of the summer night I could still discern the mon- 
 strous shape of that body on the bed. I observed 
 the birth of a light in the drawing-room and heard 
 voices. Then I heard the clock chime and strike 
 two. It was at this point that I first perceived, in 
 the midst of my spiritual pangs, how the sensitiveness 
 of my auditory nerves was increasing. I could hear 
 all the clocks of London striking, separately and 
 distinctly — so it appeared to me. Certainly hundreds 
 of thousands of clocks. Not merely the deep-sound- 
 ing boom of cathedrals, abbeys, parliaments, and 
 palaces, but the little hasty clocks of small interiors. 
 I could, for instance, distinguish every clock on every 
 floor of Palace Court Mansions. I could even hear the 
 ticking of alarm-clocks in the bedrooms of servants, 
 which was indeed louder than the soft discretion of 
 the gongs of many clocks in larger chambers. This 
 innumerable chorus of clocks continued for a long 
 time, gradually decreasing in volume but never quite 
 dying away. Its impressiveness was uncanny. The 
 living speak of the uncannincss of the dead. It
 
 i4o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 does not occur to them that manifestations of human 
 existence may be uncanny to the dead. 
 
 That sensation of the uncanny ceased. I could 
 hear, now, in the silence of the clocks, all the 
 nocturnal stir of London. I could hear the sound 
 of sleepers and of those who did not sleep : breathings, 
 restless motions, murmurings, moans, groans, sharp 
 cries, kisses, pattering of bare feet, striking of 
 matches. I could hear the regular dropping of some 
 dangerous medicine into a glass, and a quiet voice 
 counting the drops, and the gurgle of swallowing, 
 and the sigh. And I could hear laughter, and the 
 creeping of pens over paper, and the vibrating roar 
 of immense machinery, and the abrupt clanging of 
 oven doors, and the march of sentinels, and the 
 slither of dancing ; and prayers. . . . The catalogue 
 would be interminable. There was no confusion in 
 my mind. I had a million ears, independently 
 functioning. 
 
 And out of the vast material of sound I seemed 
 to be able to reproduce for myself all the interiors of 
 London. I saw attics, and rows of attics, where girls 
 were sleeping uneasily, huddled together in the atti- 
 tudes of exhaustion ; and their black frocks and 
 black aprons and elastic-tethered scissors were hung 
 upon nails or cast carelessly on chairs ; and by their 
 sides the little round fussy alarm-clocks with indica- 
 tors pointing to half-past five, six, half-past six,
 
 SOUNDS OF NIGHT mi 
 
 seven ; and on their tiny dressing-tables photographs 
 of men or of other girls. And I could see rooms 
 which resembled kitchens as much as bedrooms, with 
 men and women and children crowded on the bed, 
 and under the bed, and in every corner, and a baby 
 in a box, and all stertorously breathing, save perhaps 
 one who lay awake. And I could see immense 
 chambers, with one bed, or two, like islands rising 
 out of smooth seas of carpet, and on the beds some- 
 thing just human that moved or did not move. And 
 miles upon miles of plain average rooms, astoundingly 
 alike in their appliances of comfort, their ornaments, 
 and the visages and postures of their occupants : all 
 supported on a groundwork of empty rooms about 
 a dozen feet above the level of the roadways. Nearly 
 all dark, yet not quite dark! Here and there a 
 bright light : a man writing, or reading ; several men 
 talking ; a solitary bended pale woman sewing — 
 stitch, stitch, monotonously under a lamp ; yes, and 
 even white young girls sewing doggedly and yawn- 
 ing ! Then the prisons, black, and patterned into 
 cells like a chessboard. And the other prisons — 
 barracks, rising floor above black floor, similarly 
 patterned. And the other prisons — hospitals, 
 hotels, rising floor above floor, similarly patterned, 
 but illuminated faintly, and alive with special 
 activities. And then enormous cellars, bathed in 
 bluish radiance, and filled with huge shaking whirring
 
 I4 2 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 machines about which men scurried to and fro like 
 ants. 
 
 Behind walls, all that ! Secure within walls ! But 
 the roadways themselves — leagues of lighted avenues, 
 intersecting, curving, slanting, climbing — these too 
 seemed to be homely and secure under the guardian- 
 ship of their quiet lamps. They all led to the inner 
 and double safety and companionship of interiors. 
 And the rare people that paced them on calm regular 
 feet, or swam swiftlier over them on wheels, had the 
 consciousness of this solace on their faces. And 
 even those who wandered aimlessly, who crouched 
 on doorsteps, or lolled on the iron benches of squares 
 and embankments, even these were — how shall I put 
 it? — at home in their homelessness. The walls of 
 which the interior sides protected the sleepers, pro- 
 tected the outcasts also by their human familiarity. 
 
 I alone was solitary. I alone was cut off — by an 
 impassable and incomprehensible barrier. ... I was 
 within walls. I was in my house. I was near my 
 wife and my servants ; surrounded by the agreeable 
 toys of my daily existence. Yes ! But that was 
 naught. And, moreover, I was not after all within 
 walls, nor near my wife and my possessions. I was 
 nowhere. I had no relation to the human world. 
 Sponged off it ! And a place in the human world 
 seemed to me to be the one object worthy of desire. 
 In my tragic, unsuccoured, hopeless loneliness there
 
 SOUNDS OF NIGHT 143 
 
 was not one of these millions of human creatures 
 whose burden I would not have seized had I had the 
 power. Not a starving wretch, not a beaten child, 
 not a pregnant spinster, not a drunken beast, not a 
 murderer, a thief, a shamed deceiver, not a bereaved 
 lover, not a condemned invalid, no, not even a gloved 
 lackey, with whom I would not have exchanged lots. 
 I would have jumped to become a dog or a cab- 
 horse. The freezing blast that moans in the hollow 
 between two worlds nipped me, and I was naked 
 to it.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 MARION'S THOUGHTS 
 
 The telephone bell sharply awoke the flat with a 
 prolonged silvery ring, rising and falling several 
 times. There was a stir of movement in the 
 drawing-room, and a door opened. Then I heard 
 the conversation on the telephone. I could hear 
 it all, both my wife's voice and the voice that 
 whispered answers in her ear. A few minutes 
 previously I might have been able to hear that 
 answering voice in the very place where it spoke 
 — away at Notting Hill. But already my hearing 
 was less sensitive and sure than it had been. The 
 special faculty was passing from me, as mysteriously 
 as it had come. 
 
 " How is the patient ? " asked the whispering 
 voice, with an accent of pleasant optimism. 
 
 " Is that you, doctor ? " The voice of Inez shook. 
 
 "Yes. I am called out. Just going. I thought 
 I'd enquire before I left." 
 
 " He is gone." 
 
 " What do you say ? " 
 
 144
 
 MARION'S THOUGHTS 145 
 
 " Gone ! " 
 
 " Ah ! " The tone of the faint whisper in her ear 
 was suddenly changed. 
 
 " I should like you to come, doctor, if you don't 
 mind." 
 
 " Was it sudden ? " 
 
 " Yes. Ouite sudden. . . . About an hour ago. 
 I should like you to come round, if you could, just 
 to see." 
 
 " Yes. I'll come as soon as I can. Good-bye." 
 
 I listened with attentive ear to that short colloquy, 
 as though it concerned me, as though it had a real 
 interest for me. There was something sinister in the 
 brevities of the doctor issuing, with a curious effect 
 as of two rough surfaces being rubbed together, out 
 of the heart of the little disc into the soft ear of Inez. 
 " Ah ! " he had emitted, upon learning that I was 
 gone, and that was all ! 
 
 I ceased to be quite so preoccupied with my 
 terrible loneliness, and my thoughts gradually 
 grouped themselves around the immediate future 
 of Inez. I felt that in my absence everything 
 that had to be done would be done wrongly or 
 done clumsily. I foresaw ghastly sins against my 
 desires in connection with the interment of that 
 body. And I wished intensely to communicate to 
 somebody, in all exact details, how the affair should 
 be conducted, so that it might not offend my sense 
 
 L
 
 146 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 of propriety. I knew too well that Inez would err 
 on the side of flagrancy and spectacular emotion. 
 If I had had anything to sacrifice (which I had not), 
 I would have eagerly sacrificed it in order to reduce 
 to a minimum the spiritual ineptitudes incident to 
 a customary funeral. And although I knew that 
 that body was nothing but unorganised matter in 
 the shape of an organism, I was animated by a keen 
 vindictive repugnance to it. I blamed and hated it 
 for the blindness of those who already had comported 
 themselves, and those who soon would comport 
 themselves, in front of it ceremoniously, honouring 
 it as if it were myself — while I . . . 
 
 And I thought of all the mistakes that Inez 
 would commit in relation to my estate, and the 
 trouble she would unnecessarily raise up for herself, 
 and the disaster which she might make of the re- 
 mainder of her life. And I wondered what Mary 
 would do without her brother. I wanted to interfere 
 in a thousand things, the very least as well as the 
 very greatest. I burned in a fever of anxieties and 
 apprehensions about matters which I could in no 
 manner influence and which could in no manner 
 influence my lot. The sheer absurdity of most 
 human activities worried me, and my inability to 
 prevent that absurdity. 
 
 This obsession enlarged. And suddenly with a 
 strange disconcerting abruptness, I had a view of the
 
 MARION'S THOUGHTS 147 
 
 whole human race engaged in the business of moving 
 matter from one place to another. These creatures, 
 to whom I was now foreign and superior (in my 
 fearful solitude), seemed to exhaust themselves solely 
 in this crude physical task. It was not merely ships, 
 railways, trams, omnibuses, cabs, lifts, and the post. 
 It was shops, mines, restaurants, water, light, drainage, 
 — everything that was deemed important in the impor- 
 tant assemblages of men. Nearly the entire contents 
 of every newspaper every day were devoted to this 
 ridiculous question of moving matter from one place 
 to another ; it constituted nearly the whole of human 
 history. And I was astonished that I had never 
 before been struck by the huge, obvious fact. The 
 more I contemplated it the more absurd it seemed 
 to me, and the lower my estimate of humanity fell. 
 And I said to myself, astounded, shocked : " Why ! 
 Spiritual evolution has not begun — has not begun 
 with them ! Cannot begin until they come to see 
 what now I see so plainly ! They are children ! 
 They are navvies and porters ! " I was overwhelmed 
 by the wonder of the generalisation about humanity 
 which I had made. 
 
 All this was pushed violently out of my mind by 
 the opening of the door between the study and the 
 drawing-room. Instinctively I shrank back as far as 
 I could into the embrasure of the window. I 
 thought : " I shall be discovered ! " And whereas
 
 i 4 8 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 a while ago I was desolate at the failure of either 
 woman to see me, now I was afraid of being seen. 
 I did not wish to be seen. I trembled at the 
 possibility of being seen. 
 
 It was Marion who entered, closing the door 
 cautiously behind her. She turned on the electric 
 light, and looked at the window. But she did not 
 see me. Her eyes hesitated on the window. I 
 thought, shaking : " Supposing she decides to shut 
 it and comes towards me, what will happen then ? " 
 For I could not escape from the immediate vicinity 
 of the window. However, her eye left the window 
 and wandered to the little door between the study 
 and the bedroom. This door had remained open, and 
 as Marion advanced into the room she could see 
 what I saw in the bedroom. She stood still a 
 moment, and then, resolute, went to the little door 
 and shut it. Obviously she was relieved when she 
 had done so. Then she sat down in my easy-chair 
 — the most comfortable chair in the flat, the chair in 
 which I took my after-lunch nap and which was 
 strictly consecrate to me. And she dropped her 
 head against one of the ear-flaps, and stretched out 
 her legs. She was still wearing her starched apron, 
 but no cap. Then she took off her spectacles, 
 dropped them in one of the twin pockets of her 
 apron, and closed her eyes. 
 
 Evidently she had deemed it contrary to etiquette
 
 MARION'S THOUGHTS 149 
 
 that she should lose consciousness in the presence of 
 her mistress. And so, fatigue mastering her, she had 
 crept into the study. 
 
 Now, soon after Marion's advent, I began to lack 
 confidence in the reliability of my senses. At any 
 rate, the reports of my senses confused me and 
 dizzied my brain. When you stand before a large 
 shop-window filled with dark-coloured goods, the 
 images of the street behind you mingle with the 
 objects in the window. And according to the intent 
 of your mind, those images will fade or brighten. 
 If you wish strongly to see the objects the images 
 will disappear. If you devote your vision to the 
 images the objects will disappear. 
 
 I was aware of partial, fleeting gaps in the 
 physical continuity of the room, — gaps that yawned 
 and closed again. It was as though something — 
 nay, a whole series of phenomena — was intermittently 
 breaking through the physical phenomena. 
 
 My spine shivered, struck cold. I was on another 
 threshold. 
 
 What was the nature of the phenomena which 
 were battling with the physical phenomena for the 
 possession of my senses, I could not discern. But I 
 saw beautiful flashes of colour, scarcely iridescences, 
 yet the tints of iridescence. Then I perceived that 
 Marion was enveloped in colour. I thrilled. She 
 was surrounded by a chromatic form, somewhat
 
 iSo THE GLIMPSE 
 
 larger than herself, otherwise exactly corresponding 
 with herself. I could see her within it, as a sort of 
 large nucleus of it. The colours, which were con- 
 tinually modified, were not susceptible of description. 
 They were colours that I had never seen before. I 
 experienced no surprise that I had never seen them 
 before. I felt that I could not have seen them 
 before. I knew, too, that that envelope (or should 
 I call it emanation?) which surrounded Marion 
 always surrounded her; and that it had only been 
 invisible to eyes that could not see it. Even now 
 I could see it but dimly, but vaguely. If I centralised 
 my vision on the physical body of Marion, the 
 encircling form almost disappeared, but I could not 
 lose the body in the stedfast contemplation of its 
 envelope. 
 
 After a period of this exquisite amazement I 
 observed, very faintly at first, that small shapes were 
 escaping one by one from that part of the chromatic 
 envelope which surrounded Marion's head. They 
 floated away. Not bubbles ! Shapes more complex 
 than spheres, shapes showing design, and the per- 
 sistence of one design with minor variations ! At 
 first I could not follow them in their easy flight. 
 But they grew clearer to me. I traced them one 
 after another to a corner of the ceiling. Pre- 
 sently I could distinguish the gradual building 
 of each of them in the recesses of that chromatic
 
 MARION'S THOUGHTS 151 
 
 envelope, the body being momentarily lost to 
 sight. 
 
 Again I thrilled. 
 
 I thought, solemnly ecstatic : " They are her 
 thoughts ! " 
 
 And I was drenched in an affrighted pleasure, 
 caused by this unique and lovely experience. It was 
 as if my joy bedewed me. 
 
 I could see other small forms, but faintlier, gliding 
 about the room, nearer to me. I braced my volition 
 and my powers to follow further the disappearing 
 forms born of Marion's form. And, by perseverance, 
 I watched them through the ceiling to a higher floor, 
 where, in a small room (whose outlines were misty 
 to me), they hovered caressingly around another 
 chromatic human form that lay on a trestle bed. 
 Within the coloured envelope was the body of a 
 youth. I recognised his face. I had often seen 
 him menially engaged about the exterior of Palace 
 Court Mansions. He was, or seemed to me now, 
 extraordinarily handsome, and his attitude was dis- 
 tinguished by the graceful dignity of a fine animal. 
 
 I withdrew my peering vision from that scene. 
 
 Perhaps it was from modesty, perhaps because 
 something unusual out in the Square had attracted 
 me. There, a whole row of tall houses and elm-trees 
 had faded, and I beheld a space across which 
 thousands of forms flashed thronging. They did
 
 i52 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 not fly, were not winged. And then the houses and 
 the trees effaced them. 
 
 When I looked again into the study, the flight of 
 Marion's thoughts had ceased. I fixed my gaze on 
 her body. She was asleep. The physical outlines of 
 the room seemed to dissolve, to return, trembling, 
 distorted, and then to dissolve again. And then, 
 slowly, I saw the chromatic envelope move entirely 
 away from Marion's body. It floated an instant 
 by the side of her, an etherealised Marion. It 
 moved a little towards me, wavered, its colours 
 subtly changing every instant, and finally it swept 
 upwards, following the direction of the stream of 
 thoughts. And Marion calmly slept, dreaming.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 A DRAMA 
 
 The physical world had almost dissolved away. I 
 could see, jutting like some obstinate wreckage of a 
 catastrophe, the upper corners of my largest book- 
 case, and here and there a patch of carpet, a fragment 
 of the window, and a red Bernard-Moore vase that 
 seemed to stand self-supported and firm on the shift- 
 ing coloured currents which filled the spaces around 
 me. I was now in the midst of a moving shimmering 
 sea of vapours. Roughly, what I saw might be com- 
 pared to the tinted smoke that drifts about the 
 ground after a prolonged burning of Bengal lights 
 on a calm night. But the texture of the gaseous 
 fluid, while far finer, was at the same time closer, 
 and the currents were infinitely more complex, 
 though not more rapid. There were no blank inter- 
 stices. Everywhere was motion, vibration, change, 
 close-woven radiance, and enchanting beauty. The 
 currents were marked by different colours and different 
 shades of colour : a range of glittering and yet 
 exceedingly soft hues unknown to my physical 
 
 i53
 
 i54 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 experience. Yes ; enchanting beauty ! I was en- 
 chanted ; I was under a spell of wonder. I gazed 
 exactly as an infant gazes at a bright object. I 
 was, in fact, an infant. I knew that I could not 
 comprehend what I saw, that my observations must 
 necessarily be falsified by a whole series of naive 
 misapprehensions, like the observations of a child, 
 and that only long habit would enable me to see 
 truly that which was before me. And I thought, 
 how wondrous and lovely beyond visions was this 
 spiritual world ! 
 
 And then I asked : Why ' spiritual ' ? Why 
 1 spiritual ' more than ' physical ' ? 
 
 If hydrogen, if ether, is part of the physical 
 world, why must this not be called physical ? It 
 was gaseous, but are not gases physical? It was 
 less substantial than air, but it had substance, and 
 I could throw it into agitation and deflect its ways. 
 And then I saw that, as in the earthly world, so 
 here, and so for ever, it was and eternally would be 
 impossible even to conceive any phenomenon that 
 was not fundamentally physical. Nothing could be 
 supernatural. This gave me a feeling of comfortable 
 security. 
 
 Through the transparent prismatic quivering sea 
 floated shapes recalling those which had issued from 
 the form of Marion, more brightly or more deeply 
 coloured than the sea, each a dazzling object of
 
 A DRAMA 155 
 
 beauty to me — but a beauty sometimes sinister and 
 formidable. They moved, by means invisible to my 
 childish eyes, with the perfect aptitude of fishes in 
 water — luminous fishes in a lustrous water, radiance 
 in radiance ; some wandered without apparent pur- 
 pose, and these were of vague outline ; others, quite 
 definite in form though yieldingly elastic, passed 
 onwards in straight paths, urgent, as if on a secret 
 and unique errand. Many circled around my head, 
 melting gradually into the sea, but constantly renewed 
 and therefore not lessening in number. 
 
 Ecstasy ! 
 
 In my earthly life I had stood in ecstasy 
 before sunsets the beauty of which my imagination 
 could not exceed. . . . Now I smiled at those 
 moments. 
 
 I steeped myself in the rapture of this new visual 
 life. 
 
 There was a jarring sound, faint and disconcerting, 
 like a sound from another universe. I was aware, 
 with a dim and negligible knowledge, that it was 
 caused by the abrupt blowing to of the window under 
 the impulsion of some earthly breeze. And instantly, 
 with the speed of an emotion, Marion's form swept 
 through the translucent, prismatic sea, and came to 
 rest, the lower limbs stretched forward and the head 
 leaning curiously to one side. The form flashed, 
 scintillating, sheening, incomparably brighter than
 
 156 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the bright sea which it had perturbed into new 
 paths of luminous beauty. 
 
 And I thought : 
 
 " The banging of the window has awakened 
 Marion." 
 
 It thrilled me to think that within that form, 
 recondite, uncanny as a wraith is uncanny to the 
 mortal sense, was concealed the earthly body of 
 Marion, with its gross flesh, its clothes, the spectacles 
 in the pocket of the apron. And I could not see it. 
 It was hidden from me behind the dazzling veil of 
 more subtle phenomena. I say this thrilled me. 
 
 I thought : 
 
 " Was that her soul which fled and returned i " 
 
 I had imagined the soul in my earthly life, so 
 far as I had troubled myself with the impossible task 
 of imagining it, as — as what ? As a flame, or some- 
 thing in the form of a flame ; some wisp of divine 
 vapour insecurely imprisoned in my head. But now 
 I saw that the earthly body of Marion, instead of 
 containing an ethereal counterpart, was contained in 
 an ethereal counterpart. I knew, rather than saw, 
 that I too was a form resembling the ethereal form 
 of Marion. Was this the soul? Could it be the 
 soul? If so, what divine particle had remained in 
 the earthly body of Marion to keep it in pulsation 
 during the eager soul's clandestine desertion ? Marion 
 had relinquished her earthly body, and her body
 
 A DRAMA 157 
 
 slept. I had relinquished my earthly body, — and I 
 was dead, as ' they ' called it. Wherein lay the 
 difference between our cases ? 
 
 Child! I was yet an infant, with the incon- 
 venience of being aware of it. 
 
 The brilliant form of Marion fascinated me, the 
 child ! It also was full of vibrations, currents, and 
 shimmerings ; more complex and puzzling than 
 those of the fluid in which it floated at rest. I say 
 1 at rest ; ' but even its outline was never still, waving 
 elastically from head to foot in scarce-perceptible 
 undulations. Every part of it modified itself con- 
 tinuously, carrying on a ceaseless special activity 
 while consenting to the ceaseless change. The whole 
 was a miracle of adaptability . . . Indescribable ! Yes, 
 though in my earthly life I would have been ashamed 
 to write that word ! . . . Imagine a watch. Imagine 
 the complexity of a watch multiplied a thousand- 
 fold ! Imagine it undulating in exquisite curves 
 while still functioning with absolute exactitude ! 
 Imagine it all chromatically luminiferous ! That is 
 the gross and clumsy best I can do to defeat the 
 indescribability of that form. 
 
 When Marion had served me at dinner, it was 
 that wondrous, waving lucent form that had bowed 
 towards me. When she would presently offer to my 
 wife the restoring tea, that dazzling form would 
 miraculously undulate behind the tray, and another,
 
 158 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 its peer in ineffable beauty, would bend over the 
 earthen cup ! . . . Blind ! . . . 
 
 A vague shape swam irresolutely downwards, 
 from above or behind my head, hung, and dissolved 
 gradually. 
 
 Then recommenced the emanation of clearly- 
 defined floating shapes from the head of the ethereal 
 counterpart of Marion. They detached themselves, 
 one after another, in the manner of bubbles, and 
 flowed away in a procession, as different as indi- 
 viduals and as similar as Chinamen. I brought 
 together all my childish faculties to study their birth. 
 Their inception was indubitably to be seen in a 
 whorl or volution of the omnipresent fluid, drawn 
 into the form of Marion, matured there, and then 
 expelled. The movements and modifications were 
 so rapid and so confusing that I could determine 
 no more than this. But as each shape floated off 
 from the creative form, I perceived that the opera- 
 tions of the force which had moulded it had 
 also had their effect on the creative form itself, 
 and that the general result was structural cellular 
 change. And while I marvelled I knew that I 
 should rightly have marvelled more had it been 
 otherwise. 
 
 And this was my first dim view of the physical 
 aspect of thought Only a little while, and I had 
 by an old instinct sought to confine the attribute
 
 A DRAMA 159 
 
 ' physical ' to the earthly world. I had had to force 
 myself to apply it to this other world. But now I 
 understood that this other world was far more 
 intimately and visibly physical than the earthly. 
 In the earthly, one timorously postulated the physical 
 basis of thought ; in this other it was patent. And 
 I saw that words were a device invented by the 
 earthly world to lessen the inconveniences caused 
 by its insensibility to all but the grossest physical 
 phenomena. The earthly world was responsive to 
 nothing finer than air ; hence it employed the vibra- 
 tions of air to remedy the tremendous defects of its 
 eyesight. 
 
 Now I noticed that two plainly distinct species of 
 thought-shapes were being thrown off from Marion's 
 form. One was violet coloured, the other a delicate 
 rose. Sometimes there would be a long succession 
 of the violet, then of the rose ; then they would 
 alternate evenly. And then, as I watched, I could 
 trace a third stream of almost crude vermilion shapes 
 darting forth in a direction different from that of the 
 other two. The vermilion shapes alarmed me, and 
 even the beauty of the violet shapes, as I studied 
 them, inspired me with a certain antipathy. And, 
 time passing and my vision improving, I could 
 discern that the effects, on the woman's ethereal 
 organism, of these three different series of 
 acts of thought, were markedly dissimilar. Their
 
 i6o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 dissimilarity soon so impressed me that I wondered 
 I had observed anything else. 
 
 I followed the irregular stream of vermilion 
 shapes. By an effort of concentration I could follow 
 their absorbed and as it were angry flight through 
 the endless living luminance. And I found that 
 their objective was the form of another woman, 
 brighter even than Marion's. The form was in an 
 upright attitude, nearly still. Its earthly counter- 
 part was not therefore asleep. I sought intensely 
 to distinguish the earthly counterpart and could not. 
 Then I saw a number of less dazzling forms, hori- 
 zontally disposed, in rows ; and I reflected upon 
 hospitals, barracks, hotels. But the horizontal forms 
 were all forms of women. What could be the earthly 
 solution ? 
 
 The vermilion shapes that had so resolutely and 
 inexorably voyaged under Marion's impulse to the 
 vigil-keeping woman assaulted with extraordinary 
 obstinacy the radiant form of the latter. It was as 
 though they had been endowed with an energy, a 
 hatred of their own ; it was as if they lived with a 
 vitality of their own. And their legion increased ; 
 sometimes they completely enveloped the radiant 
 form as in a vast menace. 
 
 And then — another discovery in the exquisite 
 drama — I traced an emanation of thought-shapes 
 from the dazzling, whirling brain that the vermilions
 
 A DRAMA 161 
 
 were attacking. I had overlooked them at first, with 
 my infantile careless organs, owing to the extreme, 
 pure delicacy of their rosy tints. But having secured 
 my attention they held it by the esoteric quality of 
 their shy beauty. I followed them, in their turn, 
 leaving the radiant form enmeshed in inimical 
 vermilions. Their goal was the male form which 
 I had previously learnt to be the goal of Marion's 
 thoughts before she slept, and which I surely guessed 
 the ethereal part of her had visited during her dream. 
 I could no longer see the trestle bed, nor any trace 
 of the earthly man. I settled for myself his identity 
 chiefly by recognising the unmistakable stream of 
 violet and rosy shapes which Marion was still direct- 
 ing upon him. 
 
 To me, the naive child, it was a stupendous 
 spectacle, a spectacle overwhelming in awe and 
 beauty, — this soft besieging, this importuning or invo- 
 cation of the unconscious male form by the double 
 and the single streams of thoughts impelled by the 
 two women distant from him and from each other ! 
 The powerful latent elegance of the transparent and 
 glittering form, reposing inactive yet the theatre of 
 innumerable vital currents and vibrations that 
 showed themselves in shifting brightness ; and round 
 about it the dazzling play and interplay of the small 
 appealing lucent shapes, each influential with its 
 special energy ! The simplicity of the child in me at 
 
 M
 
 162 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 once grasped the significance of the different colora- 
 tions. The violet were the vehicles of desire, and the 
 rose were the messengers of unselfish affection. No 
 two shapes were alike in tint or in outline. There 
 were endless shades of rose ; the tenderer came from 
 the unknown woman, whose emissaries never wore 
 the formidable violet hue. The vermilions passing 
 from Marion to the unknown woman were the shapes 
 of jealous hatred. 
 
 I remembered, suddenly, having heard that the 
 fair young man who was employed about the exterior 
 of Palace Court Mansions had previously served in 
 some outdoor capacity at a prison for women-convicts. 
 I was assisting at the struggle between a parlourmaid 
 and a female warder for the heart of an odd-job-man. 
 Only I was a witness of that aspect of it which was 
 too radiant for the earthly eye to see; the fine 
 physical basis of it all, beyond the planes of earthly 
 vision. 
 
 And I thought : 
 
 " If the hidden activity of such souls is so entranc- 
 ingly resplendent, what must be the hidden activity 
 of more advanced beings ? " And again : " Perhaps, 
 nay, certainly, I have not seen all, even of these 
 three. Beyond what I have seen there may be — 
 there are — phenomena still more amazing in beauty." 
 
 In the hasty insolence of a suddenly acquired 
 knowledge I had but a few moments ago called the
 
 A DRAMA 163 
 
 earthly race a race of porters and navvies. Now I 
 knew that a complete physical vision of even a porter 
 or a navvy would dazzle my sight and my intellect, 
 newly enlarged, of which I had been so proud. I 
 humbled myself joyously in wonder. The solemn 
 thing was that 'they' themselves lived in ignorance 
 of their own splendour, and of the fineness of their 
 organism, and of the reach of their faculties. Their 
 magnificence was veiled from them. They existed 
 in easy mastery amid miracles, doing miracles, — and 
 never suspected. They did not suspect the hundredth 
 part of the powers which they possessed and con- 
 stantly exercised. They were but awaking from 
 unconsciousness into consciousness. They worked in 
 the thick gloom of instinct, not knowing when they 
 did good for themselves and when evil. They were 
 building the future with terrific tools, and guessed 
 not. 
 
 As, my searching eyes returning to their original 
 objective, I watched the prismatic form of Marion, 
 with the head on one side, creating and despatching 
 thought-shapes amid that sea of fluid light, I could 
 not help marvelling at the chasm between the self of 
 which she was conscious and the self of which she 
 was unconscious. Since I could not see the earthly 
 view of Marion, my fancy pictured it. She reclined 
 in the easy-chair, her tousled head against one of 
 the car-flaps, and those grotesque spectacles in one
 
 i6 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 of the pockets of her apron. Commanded to relate 
 sincerely what experiences she had passed through, 
 she would have replied that she had gone into the 
 study of her late master to rest, had thought con- 
 siderably about a man whom she loved, had fallen 
 asleep and dreamed of him, had been awakened by 
 a noise, and had continued to think about her lover, 
 with a certain preoccupation concerning another 
 woman whom she knew to be interested in him. 
 And she would have supposed herself to be precisely 
 the same Marion as had sat down in the chair. 
 That was all. She could not have even the dim- 
 mest surmise that she possessed a body compact 
 of light, that she had fabricated volitional shapes and 
 sent them, charged with her vital energy, infallibly 
 to fixed destinations, that she had physically and 
 eternally influenced other beings at a distance, that 
 the radiant physical part of her had visited her lover 
 where he lay, and finally that she was ceaselessly 
 modifying her own organism and so deciding the 
 tendencies of her future. 
 
 I gazed at the lambent brilliance of the form, 
 coruscating those chromatic shapes. And I was 
 aware of pity for her. I wanted somehow to warn 
 her of the grave and lasting import of her apparently 
 trifling activities. I wanted to protect her from the 
 tremendous perils of her own ignorance of herself. 
 And instantly I saw, wending from my form to hers,
 
 A DRAMA 165 
 
 a series of pale rose shapes, as lovely in their clear 
 and intricate outlines as in the delicacy of their 
 tints. Previously, I had emanated none but grey or 
 bluish shapes, inchoate or vague, and without defined 
 direction. These new shapes followed one another 
 purposefully in a waving stream and surrounded 
 gently the ethereal form of Marion, touching it in 
 soft contacts and pleasures, and being perhaps 
 infinitesimally absorbed into it. I stood afraid of 
 my own powers. Soon afterwards other shapes, and 
 harsher, visited her, and then her bright form moved 
 gliding away. 
 
 Had I sufficiently willed I might have followed 
 it. But I did not. 
 
 I was intoxicated by knowledge, and the thirst 
 for knowledge seized me with such violence that I 
 seemed to sink into a kind of inanition. "More 
 knowledge ! A deeper penetration of the mystery ! 
 In that alone lies happiness ! " Such were my 
 expiring thoughts.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE COST OF GRIEF 
 
 I GREW conscious of external vibrations which were 
 setting up vibrations within myself. I struggled 
 instinctively against this disturbance, as one in 
 heavy sleep instinctively seeks to repel the influence 
 which would wake him. But I did not succeed. My 
 perceptive faculties became unwillingly but acutely 
 active. I was still in the bright living atmosphere 
 of innumerable currents and ever-changing hues. 
 And my form was surrounded by thought-shapes 
 transparent and prismatic. I saw now that immense 
 multitudes of these shapes surged everywhere in the 
 atmosphere, but that most of them were so tenuous 
 and slight as to be scarcely visible. To distinguish 
 them from the medium in which they moved needed 
 practice. Of the shapes specially surrounding myself 
 none save two species produced any effect on me 
 whatever. But those two species did assuredly 
 affect me, causing modifications of my substance. 
 And then I understood, wondering why I had not 
 understood before, that they, like all the rest, were 
 
 1 66
 
 THE COST OF GRIEF 167 
 
 in rapid vibration and that their power over myself 
 depended on the correspondence of their vibrations 
 with certain of my own. And I saw how crude and 
 infantile was my original idea that the thought- 
 shapes acted on the bright forms of individuals by 
 being absorbed into them. 
 
 These two streams of thought were, as I felt 
 instantly, the messengers of Inez and perhaps 
 Marion, seeking to draw me again to the earthly 
 plane. They wanted me ; they longed for me ; they 
 grieved piteously at my departure, and would have it 
 cancelled, undone ; they wished time itself to roll 
 back. Perhaps they were together now, those two, 
 weeping quietly — Marion weeping respectfully. Little 
 they guessed that they were enveloped in light and 
 that their thoughts, urged by the intensity of their 
 desires, were shooting forth in coruscating torrents 
 to lure me whence I had come. The shapes, con- 
 tinuously arriving, were surpassingly beautiful to the 
 sight ; one stream was outrageously beautiful — there 
 is no other phrase for it. But with what hysteric 
 violence I sought to shake them off, to nullify by 
 mere volition the strange force of their influence 
 over me ! 
 
 I saw with painful alarm an impending tragedy, 
 myself the victim and those two women the ignorant 
 cause of it. They could only attract me near them- 
 selves, to leave me beating once more in vain against
 
 168 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the shut gates of humanity. They could never see 
 me. I could never join them. Their grief — and 
 especially the savage, remorseful grief of Inez — 
 meant nothing but disaster for me, torture, futility, 
 a desolating break in my evolution ! 
 
 Was it possible that Inez did not guess ? Was it 
 possible that she was blind to the callous, indifferent 
 selfishness of her grief — that grief in which she 
 certainly took pride ? 
 
 Yes, it was possible ; it was sure. The crime 
 against me was due to nought but lack of reflection. 
 If Inez had reflected an instant she must have seen 
 that to wish me back was to wish me evil, pain, 
 danger, and retrogression. But she considered only 
 the smart of her own sorrow ; at any cost she would 
 heal that ! I too, in my time, had been as she was. 
 
 I longed passionately to go forward. Knowledge, 
 more and stranger knowledge, was calling me on. I 
 was awake again to the divine thirst. But these 
 untowardly beautiful visitants, with their soft urgency, 
 drew me to retreat. 
 
 Aready in patches, and momentarily, the earthly 
 world broke through the lucent plane, coarsely 
 islanding the sea of radiance with fragments of the 
 existence which I had left. Sometimes I could see 
 a whole room, a whole street, clouds, a steeple, — 
 apparent and then gone. All was unfamiliar, un- 
 recognisable. Probably I should have discovered
 
 THE COST OF GRIEF 169 
 
 myself in my own home, had I not struggled fiercely 
 against any such destination. I was like a ship that, 
 determined not to fly before the wind, slides across it 
 at an angle, subject to it but defying it. I saw 
 multitudes of radiant forms sweeping along together 
 in the sea of light, and then solitary ones, and then 
 more, travelling in an opposite direction. I saw 
 groups of radiant animals. I saw mysterious radiant 
 creatures resembling nothing in my experience, en- 
 gaged intensely in activities as mysterious as them- 
 selves. All these waving in the far-stretching vibrant 
 translucency cloven by sudden irruptions of gross 
 earthly phenomena ! I was dazed. 
 
 Then the translucency grew more sombre ; of a 
 darker glow and flush. And I saw hundreds of male 
 forms on the same plane as myself, but less lustrous 
 than any I had yet encountered, crowding towards 
 one spot. And as the atmosphere in which they 
 waved became more lucid, I distinguished the roofs 
 and towers of a public square intruding in it, and 
 particularly a building that glared with coloured 
 earthly lights. The waving forms of my fellows 
 besieged this building ; some floated hesitant at the 
 doors, others swept ethereally through its coarse 
 earthly walls into the interior. It was a fashionable 
 music-hall, the Ottoman, to which John Hulsc had 
 several times taken me. I could see simultaneously 
 the exterior and the interior, with its horseshoe
 
 170 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 shape and its three garish promenades one above 
 another, and the stage like a box with one side 
 removed. It was crammed with earthly beings of 
 both sexes, either intent upon the transactions of 
 the stage or eyeing each other as they walked to 
 and fro in the promenades. A strange, ridiculous 
 spectacle ! And all bathed, interpenetrated by the 
 darkly luminiferous sea in which waved I and my 
 fellows ! Mournful confusion of two planes ! A 
 grievous band, my fellows, — sinister, anxious, un- 
 happy, agog, lickerish. See the timid regiment that 
 dared not or could not enter ! See their set eyes ! 
 And see those within, waving and wending, dully 
 chromatic, among the promenading women whose 
 gaudy clothes were obscured by the luminosity 
 which emanated from each of them. Unconscious 
 music-hall ! Conflict and altercation of lights, 
 planes, and existences ! Could they have surmised, 
 those earthly ones ; could they have truly glimpsed 
 their visitants or even themselves — what a scene of 
 terror ! . . . The earthly lights began to fade, the 
 earthly beings poured out, stampeding into the open 
 square, and so separated into groups and units. And 
 my fellows turned disappointed and unsatisfied away. 
 But some could not leave the building ; they waved 
 within it or without it, held perhaps by forces which 
 they themselves had unwittingly created. 
 
 I slanted onwards, cheerless and chagrined, but
 
 THE COST OF GRIEF 171 
 
 feeling less and less the magnetic influence of those 
 beautiful thought-shapes which were, however, still 
 following me from Inez. And after other similar and 
 possibly stranger spectacles than that of the square, 
 I seemed to quit entirely the range of earthliness, 
 and I was once more in the radiant and thrilled 
 atmosphere of moving colour unstained by any gross 
 invasion. My mood lightened as I voyaged. And 
 at length I perceived that this ocean was a solitude 
 for me. I alone deflected its multitudinous currents. 
 No thought-shapes, even, wandered through it, save a 
 few that still obstinately but faintly pursued myself. 
 And then I descried a brighter luminance. And 
 I approached it, nearer and nearer ; until, compared 
 to its splendour, the splendour of the ambient atmo- 
 sphere was darkness. And amid the glittering rays 
 which darted around the luminance, my dazzled eyes 
 seemed to distinguish a form of pure light. I 
 trembled. Dread was upon me. I wanted to draw 
 still nearer. But I dared not. My pride refused me. 
 I feared, not for my safety, but lest I might encounter 
 a greater than I. Cowardice ! Always I had declined 
 to bow to the conception of a spiritual superior. I 
 turned and fled. Yes, it was a flight. Not a single 
 thought-shape now dogged me. I was solitary.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 FREEDOM 
 
 CONCEIVE the luminous air, less agitated here by 
 currents, but still flashing and sparkling in delicate 
 hues, strange even to my now-accustomed eyes. I 
 have called it a sea, in my forlorn attempts after an 
 impossible adequacy of description. Dismiss any 
 idea of humidity, of resistance, of embarrassment, of 
 unusualness. I existed in an element that was my 
 element, as proper and as necessary to me as earthly 
 air once. That I should live in diffused light, in a 
 visible atmosphere, in an environment of trans- 
 parencies, seemed absolutely natural to me. I say 
 this lest I should have inadvertently led you to 
 conceive me as miraculously swimming through 
 miraculous wet waves, or moving half-blinded amid 
 the coloured fumes of unimagined fires. I was at 
 home. 
 
 Save myself and this encircling air, the sole 
 phenomena were the vague thought-shapes which 
 constantly emanated from me, floating idle near for 
 a time and then vanishing. 
 
 172
 
 FREEDOM 173 
 
 I was alone. Before my death, my greatest 
 pleasure had been in reflection. The habit of reflec- 
 tion was assuredly dearer to me than no matter what 
 companionship ; and I would not have sacrificed it 
 to gain any reputation whatever. Yet if it had been 
 remarked to me, before my death : " You are happiest 
 when you withdraw within yourself," I should have 
 sincerely denied the assertion. I now perceived how 
 true it would have been. With what a feeling of 
 almost ecstatic joy and freedom I used to plunge 
 into the streets in order to muse at my ease ! With 
 what deep satisfaction I savoured my contemplations, 
 even when they were gloomy, as ordinarily they were. 
 A futile self-indulgence! 
 
 In this life- and light-bestowing atmosphere, with 
 a mental apparatus incomparably less defective than 
 that other, I mused for an eternity, amid conditions 
 of unexampled freedom, except the liberty to 
 encounter other phenomena. And I said to myself: 
 
 " Should this be likened to heaven or to hell ? " 
 
 And I replied : 
 
 "To both." It was neither distinctly a reward 
 nor distinctly a punishment (for a punishment is also 
 a reward), but a consequence, a sequel. 
 
 I had no sense of time nor of change. There 
 was no morning, no night. Nor did I desire these 
 external accidents. I was set and fixed in a calm, 
 omnipresent vacuous beauty, inviolate.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 THE WOMAN 
 
 A DESIRE awakened in me for companionship. It 
 waxed, became definite and precise. For a space I 
 had the sensation of being no longer alone, but my 
 eyes could not confirm the sensation. There, near 
 me, without surprise, but with rapture, I saw a 
 woman. She was more radiant than any radiant 
 creature I had yet seen, save the one from whose 
 light I had retreated, and whom indeed I could not 
 be said to have veritably seen. She was the acme 
 of the beautiful in my experience ; in face, in figure, 
 and in grace. She saw me without surprise, but with 
 rapture. 
 
 I shared eternity with this woman. 
 
 We passed through an existence on a level of 
 noble simplicity not to be conceived on the earthly 
 plane, — noble in its passion, in its repose, in all its 
 intercourse mental and emotional. We were never, 
 as the phrase is, ' brought to earth ' by the pettiness 
 of life. The conditions of our life eliminated any 
 pettiness. Even our bodies did not weigh upon us, 
 
 174
 
 THE WOMAN 175 
 
 obstinate in their grossness. Our relations were 
 purified by the complete absence of apprehension 
 serious or trifling. We did not fear the morrow, nor 
 the fragility of the physical frame, nor penury nor 
 death, nor the soul's capriciousness, nor the wound of 
 an ugly vision, nor the incursion of another's grief 
 into our bliss. Our life together was the essence of 
 life, classically purged of the extrinsic ; it was raised 
 to the elemental. 
 
 We had not even names. 
 
 She combined in her nature all fine qualities, 
 even the most opposite. She was the very spirit of 
 grace ; never did she lapse from grace. All the 
 physical manifestations of her were lovely. She was 
 more feminine than any being of her sex that I had 
 ever seen. She was yielding ; she was acquiescent ; 
 she was the embodiment of surrender. Yet when 
 she had given all she had more to give, and after 
 every sort of compliance her own powerful individu- 
 ality remained intact. She reflected, but was not a 
 glass. Her receptivity exalted me, but did not 
 lower herself. She was always ready to mould her 
 mood to mine ; but when I wished to mould mine to 
 hers, she had sufficient force to make the freak a 
 valuable experience. She had the perfect modesty 
 of utter shamelessness. She reconciled dignity with 
 capriciousness, and capriciousness with reason. She 
 was both intuitive and rational. She never argued
 
 176 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 like a woman except in circumstances when the 
 result would be creditable to each of us. She never 
 sheltered herself, against me, behind her womanhood. 
 She had, to a degree that did not cease to be astound- 
 ing, the skill to preserve my self-respect and her own 
 and my respect for her : feat of supreme difficulty ; 
 feat also necessary to a perfect relationship ! She 
 soothed without enervating. She stimulated without 
 fatiguing. She was constant without monotony. 
 She was faultless without being tedious. 
 
 And she had a glance. . . . 
 
 Before my death I had impatiently demanded, in 
 the excess of my fastidiousness, why all women could 
 not be rolled into one woman for the companionship 
 of a man. I had encouraged such an all-compre- 
 hensive woman as an impossible ideal. Here it was 
 realised. Here it was much more than realised, for 
 she had every fine quality in greater profusion than I 
 had met any single fine quality in any woman before. 
 As an instrument of every noble pleasure, she 
 exceeded the dream as the dream exceeded the 
 previous reality. She was mine. She was my com- 
 plement ; but I was under no obligation to be hers. 
 Her destiny was to complete mine. She was happy 
 in it. She asked no more. With all her glorious 
 faculties and charms, she was joyously content to 
 subserve my end. It was the most sublime flattery 
 that could be conceived.
 
 THE WOMAN 177 
 
 " Is it heaven or hell ? " I asked myself, in the 
 midst of eternity. 
 
 And after an eternal pause, I replied : 
 
 " Both." 
 
 I thus lived between meditation and the woman, 
 wrapped in beauty. 
 
 Whether she knew that I was in heaven and in 
 hell I could not guess. Though her very soul seemed 
 to have the transparency of crystal, I could not 
 guess. This was the unique insoluble enigma that 
 the wondrous creature offered to my intelligence. 
 
 N
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE PALACE 
 
 It was she who descried the palace. I call it a 
 palace, not because it was immense and gorgeous, 
 but because of its impressive dignity and stateliness. 
 It rose, secure upon no foundations, aloft in the 
 luminiferous ether, glittering prismatically as every- 
 thing glittered, somewhat brighter than the pulsating 
 air, rather less bright than ourselves. It so nearly 
 matched the air in hues and radiance, that at first I 
 could scarcely distinguish the form of its architecture ; 
 it was like an edifice of pearl seen faintly in a sun- 
 steeped mist. It seemed unreal. But it was real 
 enough. Presently I could decipher its dome, its 
 slender pillars masking its walls, its cornices, and its 
 inviting portal. It had no windows. 
 
 On the radiant plane it was the only object I had 
 met whose outlines did not continuously wave. It 
 existed rigid as a whole, but within the undeflected 
 outlines, a slight vibration of the material itself could 
 be observed. 
 
 I entered alone. And when I beheld its interior 
 I exclaimed softly to myself : 
 
 178
 
 THE PALACE 179 
 
 " Of course ! " 
 
 It was a library. I was a bookman ; I had always 
 been a bookman. From adolescence books had been 
 one of my passions. Books not merely — and perhaps 
 not chiefly — as vehicles of learning or knowledge, 
 but books as books, books as entities, books as 
 beautiful things, books as historical antiquities, books 
 as repositories of memorable associations. Questions 
 of type, ink, paper, margins, watermarks, paginations, 
 bindings, were capable of really agitating me. I was 
 too sensitive and catholic a lover of books to be a 
 scholar in the strict modern meaning of the term. 
 My magnum opus was not a work of scholarship, 
 and even such scholarship as it comprised had been 
 attained by a labour hateful to me. I would inhale 
 the scholarship of others as a sweet smell ; I would 
 gather it like honey, but eclectically, never exhausting 
 one flower before trying the next. My knowledge 
 was perhaps considerable, but it was unorganised. 
 And my principal claim to consideration was that I 
 could wander in any demesne of culture without 
 having the awkward air of a stranger. In brief, I 
 was comprehensively bookish. 
 
 I had dreamed of libraries, as every bookman has 
 dreamed of libraries. This one did not correspond 
 with my dream, because it went beyond my dream 
 in every particular. I could sec that at a glance, by 
 the look of the volumes, by the disposition of the
 
 180 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 volumes, and by the machinery of research. No 
 book in any noble library is so interesting, so reveal- 
 ing, as the catalogue of it. Every bookman has 
 discovered this truth for himself. The catalogue of 
 this library was ranged on a series of low shelves 
 under the dome. The catalogue of this library was 
 more finely printed, and more superbly bound than 
 any book that I had ever seen. Each quarto volume 
 was an individual triumph of typography. The 
 setting of the page — desperate problem in catalogue 
 or dictionary — was a masterpiece of technical in- 
 genuity. Not till my nostrils had quivered to these 
 delights, did I turn to the plan of the catalogue, with 
 its system of two simultaneous alphabets, so intricate 
 and yet so effectively simple. The catalogue in an 
 instant of time told me more of the library than I 
 could easily believe. 
 
 Lying open on the desk above the rows of the 
 catalogue was a folio, open. Henry Stephen's edition 
 of Herodotus, familiar to amateurs of impartial 
 taste as one of the most beautiful books existing in 
 the Greek character. But not such an example of 
 the treasure as I had seen ! An example transmuted 
 into the very divinity of bibliophily ! Radiant, light- 
 giving, immaculate ! To touch it was to thrill. And 
 every book, in its degree, was thus consummated into 
 the transcendent. 
 
 I began to use the library. I said to myrjlf:
 
 THE PALACE 1S1 
 
 " This alone lacked." And I knew how to use it. I 
 was worthy of it. It was an instrument which I 
 could employ without degrading it. My assimilative 
 powers astonished me, though I knew that they were 
 tremendously enriched. The rapidity with which I 
 could seize the principles of an unknown language 
 was specially exciting. 
 
 In the library I spent an eternity, making contacts 
 with all cultures, and acquiring an erudition that by 
 the standard of an earthly plane would be deemed 
 immeasurable. But I never exhausted the library. 
 I never even approached its confines. I never saw 
 the beginning of the end of it. And I was free. I 
 read where I pleased ; I went deep where I pleased ; 
 I was superficial where I pleased. I had no task, no 
 obligation, no finite goal. My one aim was to pro- 
 cure pleasure in absorbing that which was delicate, 
 refined, humane, curious, distinguished, in the emo- 
 tional and learned literature of the centuries. I was 
 the supreme dilettante. I had always longed to carry 
 the cult of belles-lettres to unprecedented heights. 
 Now I accomplished what I had wished to accomplish, 
 and tenfold what I had wished to accomplish, amid 
 conditions that fulfilled the ideal. For not merely 
 was this ardour of self-perfection unattended by any 
 personal inconveniences, but it involved the neglect 
 of no duty. 
 
 The woman was happy in my absorption, and she
 
 182 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 was happy when I drew out of it and lost myself in 
 her. Part of her destiny was to be solitary when I 
 had no need of her, and the weaving of one part of 
 her destiny was no more precious to her than the 
 weaving of another. It was inconceivable that her 
 glance should reproach me, or that I could be guilty 
 towards her. Such was our relation that my every 
 act, because it was my act, was best for her. 
 
 And still I asked myself: 
 
 " Is it heaven or hell ? " 
 
 And I replied : 
 
 "It is both." 
 
 I began, in the midst of delicious and calm 
 eternities of perfect realisation to be ever so dimly 
 aware within me of disturbing intuitions. They shot 
 through me, were gone, and were forgotten. They 
 returned, and I remembered the forgotten flash of 
 them.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 CULMINATION 
 
 I THUS lived with my thoughts and with the woman, 
 in and out of the palace of literatures, that rested 
 firm and lovely for ever on no foundation amid the 
 luminiferous air. I was continually discovering new 
 pleasures within the palace, and yet nothing that I 
 discovered could surprise me ; not even the pictures 
 and sculptures which abounded in quiet aisles of it, 
 and whose tremendous power and beauty were even 
 less susceptible of adequate description than the 
 library itself. I could not exist in the palace without 
 being the constant and thrilled object of the most 
 lofty and delicate influences of art. 
 
 Then I found a new doorway at the extremity 
 of the palace, and, looking from it, I saw, in the 
 universal radiance, distant landscapes and seas. Never 
 since my death, till then, had I seen a landscape. 
 These were the majestic, absolute perfecting of 
 earthly landscapes — purified of the accidental. I 
 can only liken them, clumsily, to the landscapes 
 of the greatest Japanese paintings, vast, simple, 
 
 183
 
 i8 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 overwhelming in the severe sobriety of their beauty. 
 Mountains ; valleys ; rivers that wound in expressive 
 and faultless curves to solemn oceans ; and the line 
 of coasts. All more radiant than the radiant air ! 
 All transparently gleaming in a consonance of hues 
 without a name ! All bathed in the speechless calm 
 of eternity ! 
 
 What an ennobling and fresh impulse to the 
 thoughts ! 
 
 And, nearer, were immense gardens, strictly for- 
 malised : avenues, alleys, borders, fountains, trained 
 trees, geometric spaces, canals, fountains, patterns of 
 flowers, statuary, pergolas. And the chief avenue 
 ran, widening out of the long perspective, right up 
 to the doorway at which I stood. It was all mine. 
 And with the woman I would wander in it, enfran- 
 chised from every care and preoccupation. Ideal 
 nature in the distance ; nature subjugated by ideal 
 art around us, and fine art itself in the palace ! No 
 time ; no task ! Freedom and eternity ! 
 
 Then I came to the first of the pavilions of music, 
 in which orchestras and smaller groups played the 
 most sublime and the most accomplished of all the 
 music that was known to me, and many compositions 
 which were unfamiliar and which left me the ecstatic 
 and silent victim of their power. In all this music 
 the exquisite quality of the tone itself was what first 
 amazed me ; the basic material out of which beauty
 
 CULMINATION 185 
 
 was fashioned was itself surpassingly beautiful. I 
 had not heard such instruments, nor such tech- 
 nique. . . . Nor can I describe this music. And 
 yet, I could have described it then. It was in con- 
 nection with this music that I first had intercourse 
 with beings other than the woman on my own plane. 
 The musicians themselves were hedged away from 
 me by the peculiar construction of the pavilions. 
 But there were other listening wanderers in the 
 gardens. And they were ready to converse ; we 
 conversed with familiar ease, unastonished at the 
 encounter, unharassed by any curiosity concerning 
 each other, demanding and expecting nothing from 
 each other but subtlety, justness, and clarity in our 
 critical and comparative appreciations of that which 
 we heard. I was indeed among equals ; safe from the 
 horrid jar of ignorance, violence, or prejudice. These 
 exchanges of opinion, these confessions of emotional 
 experience, filled in the most delicious manner the 
 pauses of the music. As soon as the mood dictated 
 I departed from the garden, quitting the other 
 dilettanti without any regret but with the pleasurable 
 anticipation of meeting them again. From the door- 
 way I would watch for a moment the beautiful 
 attitudes assumed by their iridescent forms under 
 the waving trees. I had no wish for closer intimacy 
 with them. That earthly longing to tear the veil 
 from the secrets of personality seemed somewhat
 
 186 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 infantile to me, if not vulgar. The profound intimacy 
 of my one companion sufficed. I savoured the 
 society of the inhabitants of the garden ; I had 
 fervent joy in my one companion ; but my delight 
 in loneliness never lessened. 
 
 In my loneliness I would reflect upon the strange 
 sequence of my history. I saw that the supreme 
 experience of the music had been reserved for me. 
 I understood the logical order of the phases. I 
 marvelled that until each experience came I should 
 not have felt the lack of it. I, whose concern had 
 been supereminently with music, had not consciously 
 desired music till I heard its sound. Desire and the 
 satisfaction of desire had been simultaneous. 
 
 Enveloped in eternity I lived amid universal 
 nature, and amid music, and amid the influences 
 of the other arts, tasting erudition, smoothly consort- 
 ing with equal individualities, losing myself awhile 
 in radiant space with my one perfect companion, 
 and at moments withdrawing into absolute solitude 
 that I might know what I was. The existence was 
 like a dream ; but it was not a dream. It had the 
 magic and incredible idealism of a dream ; but it 
 was not a dream. It was a physical reality — visible, 
 audible, tangible. It lacked naught. Not even was 
 it flamed by dark tints of regret for those familiarities 
 and those faces which I had left behind on the 
 other side of death. No! The tie with that other
 
 CULMINATION 1S7 
 
 plane seemed to be definitely snapped. I had no 
 sorrow. 
 
 And still, I asked myself: 
 
 " Is this heaven or hell ? " 
 
 And the answer was the same as it had always 
 been. 
 
 And those disturbing intuitions revisited me with 
 their lancinating flash, frequently and more fre- 
 quently : forgotten, and insistently recalling them- 
 selves to my memory made forgetful by the perfection 
 of conceivable happiness.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 THE DEATH OF DESIRE 
 
 At a certain moment, after an unusually long period 
 of solitary reflection, I became aware of the possession 
 of a definite and paramount idea. And I saw its 
 shape, differing utterly from any other shape. I saw 
 it and felt it suddenly, but the time of its gestation 
 within me must have been immense. It was the 
 fruit of all those persistent and similar strokes of 
 intuition. Revolutionary, fatal, and final in character, 
 it nevertheless neither startled nor intimidated me. 
 I beheld it calmly, as though I had been acquainted 
 with it from everlasting. It was : that I had been, 
 and was still, living in hell. (I perhaps need not say 
 that I use the word ' hell ' for its large associational 
 convenience, trusting that it may be aptly interpreted.) 
 My lot did not partake of the nature of heaven. 
 
 Every fine and beautiful desire which had con- 
 stantly and genuinely actuated me in that other and 
 ended existence, had in this existence been realised 
 to a degree transcendental and previously unimagin- 
 able. Every such desire had even been purged 
 
 1 83
 
 THE DEATH OF DESIRE 189 
 
 of what was mean and accidental in it, and had 
 passed into consummation in the purest essential 
 form, free from all trace of trivial or base admixtures. 
 My plan for the extension and completion of my 
 egoism had been impeccably executed, either by me 
 or for me. 
 
 Eternity lapsed onward in the midst of universal 
 radiance, — and I was in hell. The foundation of my 
 consciousness was an affliction so intense that during 
 an eternity I had generally accepted it for a bliss 
 equally intense. (And indeed it is within the experi- 
 ence of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach 
 a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.) But 
 now I had reached the stage of clear vision. Strange 
 that one can inhabit hell without the sure conviction 
 of being there ! 
 
 And another epochal idea was born in me, equally 
 definite, less fundamental, but distressing. I myself 
 had created those instruments to the realisation of 
 desire. The woman, the palace, the literatures, the 
 works of art, the garden, the music, the musicians, 
 the elegant dilettanti, the formidable and lovely 
 landscapes, — I had created them all. Incomparably 
 marvellous as they were, they were yet the toys 
 which the spiritual child in me had created for his 
 diversion out of the all-permeating ethereal essence 
 in which I existed. Or, if I was not the creator, 
 I was the cause of the creative acts. The creative
 
 igo 
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 acts had been performed at my will. The order of 
 the universe was such that terrific energies of creation 
 were in subjection to my impulses. I had dreamed — 
 yes, I will admit now what previously I had denied 
 — I had dreamed ; but here one could not dream 
 without creating realities. The elastic responsiveness 
 of matter was so sensitive that vision and physical 
 fact were one. 
 
 Even the woman I had created. She was supernal, 
 but she was only the blossom of my desire ; she was 
 only an ineffable extension of my egoism. 
 
 I say that this knowledge distressed me. It was 
 humiliating, more humiliating than any other experi- 
 ence in my memory. And the whole of my sublime 
 creation gradually descended in my esteem till it 
 appeared — no, not tawdry, though I was about to 
 use the word — but negligible ! Exquisitely and pain- 
 fully negligible ! An infant's plaything ! 
 
 And yet it constituted a fabulously prodigious 
 array, there behind me on the borders of my solitude. 
 As I passed it mentally in review, I thrilled in retro- 
 spect, as one thrills after a wonder or a danger which 
 one appreciates only when it is over. The sense of 
 the creative power of thought wrapped me in discon- 
 certing folds of the uncanny. That woman ! . . . 
 What would thought not do, impelled by desire? 
 How did I stand, the creator, towards her, the 
 created ? Could I dissolve her back into the essence,
 
 THE DEATH OF DESIRE 191 
 
 resuming the energy which I had breathed into her ? 
 Had I the right to do so? This that I had com- 
 mitted was the most mysterious and awful of sins. 
 I dared not emerge from my solitude, and, returning 
 to the loveliness which my desire had brought into 
 existence, look it in the face ! No remorse could 
 redeem what I had done ! Nevertheless, a force that 
 sprang from the soul of my soul compelled me, all 
 shrinking and reluctant, to revisit my vast exploit. 
 
 It was fading. My palace, still complete in every 
 outline, scarcely affected the sight. It was like air 
 against radiant air, dimly gleaming ; melting like the 
 dream it was. I walked through it as through the 
 portalled fabric of a luminous cloud. And its 
 treasures lay serried within it, faint in dissolution. 
 The great gardens were as gardens moulded in 
 vapour, and their pathways nothing but beams of 
 some pale effluence. And I could see the forms of 
 the amiable and cultured dilettanti grouped together 
 in the final attitudes of prostration ; and over them 
 the drooping trees. And my affrighted ear caught 
 the thin desolate piping of music expiring in an 
 anguish of beauty ; while a faint refulgence on the 
 farthest horizons showed where the majesty of my 
 seas and mountains was dying. 
 
 Yes, she too was there. Her bright ebbing was 
 the longest. . . . 
 
 At last I was alone in the infinite vibrating
 
 i9* THE GLIMPSE 
 
 atmosphere from which the miracle of my creative 
 dream had been drawn, and into which it had again 
 resolved. And then I felt that dissolution awaited 
 me also. And I perceived with the suddenness of 
 a revelation that I had not yet died. I had not, as 
 I thought, been through death. That trifling muta- 
 tion which sloughs the earthly flesh was not death. 
 It was but the first portico, the preliminary warning 
 of the real death. The real death meant the end of 
 desire, and it now approached. I yearned for it. It 
 was the last of my desires ; it was the desire which 
 closed desire. In my increasing lassitude and loss of 
 strength, I spent tremendous force in urging myself 
 into that real death, so that I might know what was 
 beyond it. The possession of such knowledge seemed 
 to be a consideration dwarfing all others into nullity. 
 
 And it was as if I cast off garment after garment 
 of radiance ; and I could see these abandoned shells 
 floating weakly around me in the light. 
 
 And then there visited me a beatific ministra- 
 tion — thought-shapes that had travelled through 
 immeasurable void to soothe me into unconscious- 
 ness. They were the thoughts of Inez. She was 
 praying for the welfare of my soul.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 BIRTH 
 
 Death is an awakening. 
 
 Familiar and ancient phrase ! A survival from 
 the wreck of creeds. One had ceased to regard it 
 as possessing an instant significance. One had 
 classed it with the pathetic refuse amid which it 
 lay. A corpse from which the soul of meaning had 
 escaped ! And yet — it is astonishing and portentous 
 how the immortal spark will leap out of the white 
 ashes, and burn and blind ! The deep truth of the 
 phrase burst upon me in a tremendous disclosure. The 
 phrase had been debased in the mouths of fanatics, 
 hypocrites, devotees, and hysterics for thousands of 
 years ; and it came to me fresh, virgin, and exquisitely 
 apposite. I awoke. I knew what it was to quicken. 
 I knew what it was to emerge from stupor, dream, 
 nightmares, and illusion into reality and activity. I 
 had the poignant sense of life. And I viewed all 
 that out of which I had awakened with a pitiful 
 surprise, not violent but gentle. It was without 
 importance, since it was over ; but nevertheless there 
 
 193 o
 
 i 9 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 was something wondrous, something that strangely 
 touched me, in the simple fact that through all that 
 heavy and agitated sleep, sleep which had never 
 lightened beyond a drowsiness haunted by hallucina- 
 tions, I had not once guessed that I was not awake, 
 that I was not truly born. And all the past, from 
 its dim beginnings on the plane of earth to the last 
 flicker of consciousness in the death of my desires, 
 receded whole, swung backwards into the infinitely 
 remote, and became history. 
 
 The limits of honest description are now being 
 reached. I was in life. I knew the real. But I 
 cannot convey the impression of it. No feeling of 
 awe, no hesitation about unveiling the esoteric, pre- 
 vents me, but simply the fundamental impossibility 
 of the feat. All the standards of comparison are 
 now too weakened. 
 
 I had, even in my stupor, moved amid light, 
 chromatic, prismatic, amid transparencies and dazzling 
 beauties. I had already, even in the progressive 
 evolution of my dreams and illusions, enjoyed 
 miraculous powers and sensations, penetrating appa- 
 rently to the farthest verge of physical capacities. 
 My nightmares had closed in perceptions and know- 
 ledge that earlier would have seemed incredible of 
 achievement. . . . All that — in the adequate relation 
 of which I have already failed, and must have failed, 
 even with a glittering mosaic of superlatives — all that
 
 BIRTH 195 
 
 was nothing ! All that was dull, heavy, dingy, 
 leaden, inert, lifeless. 
 
 Imagine intensity. . . . 
 
 See ! Imagine the central living fires of a 
 furnace, white-glowing (or what you call white, for 
 it is utterly different from the white of snow), shades 
 of light passing over them and through them, waver- 
 ing hues of no colour ! Imagine the depths of that 
 terrific vitality, upon which your eye dare not rest ; 
 upon which even your imagination dare not rest for 
 long, lest the thrill should frighten you ! Imagine 
 this intensity, and this light that varies yet is with- 
 out colour ! But use your imagination with skill and 
 mastery. Let it separate the blasting destructiveness 
 of heat from this light and this intensity. . . . 
 
 The brain must accustom itself. A world of 
 light and intensity. . . . 
 
 A world not of colour. 
 
 With that, a world of lightness ! Not immaterial, 
 because that which is immaterial cannot be con- 
 ceived. But matter refined to a tenuity far sur- 
 passing the ethereality of the plane from which I 
 had awakened. And yet broadly divisible into the 
 three degrees. And exceedingly complex in its 
 organisation ; functioning in ten thousand novel 
 ways ; expending energy as it were in an ecstatic in- 
 toxication of irrepressible vitality. . . . Pulsating with 
 currents of vibration that flashed through, modifying
 
 196 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 themselves innumerable times in a moment ! A 
 world of instant responsiveness, of answer darting 
 to impulse with the speed of perfect sensibility. . . . 
 A-throb ! 
 
 Beings, like myself, in this intense environment, 
 centres of still more intense vitality ; unnumbered ! 
 A few outshining the rest in the brightness of their 
 intensity and the bewildering manifestations of their 
 life. And here and there, scarcely discernible in 
 glory, greater beings, beings whose glory itself veiled 
 them, and who freely passed into and from a vast 
 indistinguishable radiating nucleus of force and light 
 which their lesser companions seldom approached. 
 In my sleep I had seen one such greater being and 
 had fled in illusory fear, fear from which now I was 
 delivered. 
 
 This immeasurable universe of beings was in the 
 eternal and blissful throe of intense intercommunica- 
 tion ! What actuated it, what threw it into its 
 fervour of life, was a sort of sublime frenzy of urgent 
 mutual sympathy. The intercommunication was 
 immediate, the exchange of thought instantaneous 
 in this environment of absolute responsiveness. It 
 went on incessantly, universally, and with an ultimate 
 vehemence. It was an everlasting effervescence and 
 ebullition. . . . Imagine the sentient atoms of some 
 ineffable whole, separated through aeons, and then 
 rejoining, yearning in an endless spasm towards a
 
 BIRTH 197 
 
 supreme coalescence. ... At moments it seemed as 
 if the coalescence was accomplished. Beings and 
 environment seemed to merge into an invisible unity. 
 . . . Then the atoms would break apart and resolve 
 again, and the vehicle in which they moved would 
 whitely glisten once more with those lovely geometric 
 figures that were apparently their abstract con- 
 ceptions, static. 
 
 Imagine the solemn calm of this intense life, if 
 you can. . . . 
 
 And I ! What and how was I, atom in this con- 
 course ? When the swimmer unclothes, and abandons 
 himself to the water, naked, letting the water caress 
 the whole of his nakedness, moving his limbs in 
 voluptuous ease untrammelled by even the lightest 
 garment, then, as never under other conditions, he 
 is aware of his body ; and perhaps the thought occurs 
 to him that to live otherwise than in that naked 
 freedom is not to live. ... So was I aware for the 
 first time of my body, elastic, responsive, and free. 
 So I had at last cast off the hard, stiff, encumbering 
 cases which in my visions of delusion I had accepted 
 for my body. Astounding that even in a stupor of 
 the senses I could have supposed that those gross 
 unresponsive envelopes were my body ! Astounding 
 that the spark of life should have survived those 
 stifling imprisonments. . . . Now I had a vivid joy 
 in my body, whose form, in its eternal changefulness,
 
 198 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 maintained a constant surprise of pure beauty. Its 
 plasticity under the function of thought was an ever- 
 renewed miracle of curves. It was the creature and 
 the illustration of my thought and of the thoughts 
 which impinged on it. It thrilled from moment to 
 moment into new and yet individual contours. It 
 was always I, but I was never the same. In brief, 
 life ! . . . But above all, the sense of liberty found, 
 the exquisite enfranchisement from grossness ! Free 
 life! . . . The mere incomparable bliss of knowing 
 what real life was 1 
 
 Beyond this new and exciting experience of the 
 
 reality of life, overshadowing it, reducing it to the 
 
 function of a basis, was the sense of companionship, 
 
 of partaking in a vast and profound communion, of 
 
 utter giving and utter receiving, of transcendent 
 
 interpenetration of spirit by spirit. . . . The double 
 
 bliss of realising my self and of simultaneously 
 
 merging it in others ! . . . Intimacy more rapturous, 
 
 surrender more complete, than the closest intimacy 
 
 or the most unreflecting surrender on the lower 
 
 planes. . . . No desire but to outpour, to enrich the 
 
 universal from the vase of the soul, to restore that 
 
 which in the origin had been bequeathed. All joy 
 
 seemed to be here, and this joy was the excuse and 
 
 justification for the exultant joy in the discovery of 
 
 the self. The value of the treasure was only potential 
 
 till the treasure was lavished in an ardour of altruistic
 
 BIRTH 199 
 
 beneficence. The sublime instinct of the self was to 
 plunge, melt, and be lost. This was the last supreme 
 impulse of the primal urgency towards reality and 
 truth. This was bliss. 
 
 Imagine this fever, this riot of emotion, directed 
 and controlled by intellectual forces of a strength, a 
 subtlety, and a complexity all surpassing experience, 
 having gathered up into themselves the whole harvest 
 of experience. Imagine reason and rapture in 
 sublime co-ordination ! . . . No ! You cannot. Fail- 
 ing myself in the impossible, I am asking you to 
 succeed in it. No gallantry of the brain can cross 
 the spaceless gulf between two planes. I relinquish. 
 . . . And yet, all planes are one, and there is in you 
 that which may divine the inexpressible. 
 
 Imagine the uncoloured light, intensely wavering ; 
 the plastic beauty of forms mutually responsive in the 
 sensitive fineness of the medium ; the greater beings, 
 veiled in films of splendour ; the rapture of the 
 realisation of selves in freedom ; the play of pure 
 intellect ; the fierce and calm rapture of universal 
 communion ; the sublime crisis in the yearning 
 towards ultimate unity ! Bliss ! . . . Can you ?
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE PAST 
 
 In the tremendous calm of one of those periods of 
 apparent coalescence, when all the marvellous faculties 
 of the freed organism were more marvellously inten- 
 sified and enlarged, I could review my careers from 
 birth. I mean the birth into the earthly body. I 
 saw what you call my life from beginning to end, as 
 the winding course of a river seen from a high 
 mountain. I saw it equally in detail and as a whole ; 
 day by day and simultaneously. It was for me, as I 
 chose, either forty years of minute acts, or a single 
 gesture passing in an instant of time. It seemed to 
 me — not a tragedy, for I knew the sequel of it, but 
 nevertheless tragic in quality ; and exceedingly 
 strange. Doubly strange ! Strange in itself, and 
 strange in my attitude towards it while I was living 
 it ! A disconcerting — even a shocking — and a re- 
 vealing strangeness ! 
 
 The casing of this ' me ' in a coloured envelope 
 which though fluid and not unresponsive was infinitely 
 less so than myself, — that alone was an astonishing 
 
 200
 
 THE PAST 201 
 
 imprisonment ; but that this casing should be inter- 
 penetrated by another, of an impossible grossness, 
 heaviness, dullness. . . . ' Strange ' was a word inade- 
 quate. Understand me — I say 'casing' in no tone 
 of scorn for these envelopes. I recognised that they 
 were a vital extension of me, that they lived by a 
 separate life which, however, had its origin in me. But 
 what a prison for me ! Earthly fancy had never 
 constructed or even conceived a prison to vie with this 
 prison ! What a living burial ! I whose progressive 
 evolution could work itself out by none but the finest 
 vibrations — I thrilled in vain against these callous 
 walls. And what communication from beyond could 
 ever reach me through them ? They were impene- 
 trable. I had been cut off from intercourse. I had 
 been reduced to a sort of coma of futility while these 
 living envelopes went their ways, unguided. I had 
 been helpless. And yet not utterly helpless — for at 
 rare intervals, by some fortunate coincidence of cir- 
 cumstances, I was able to give some fleeting signal 
 of myself, or to catch some vibration fine enough to 
 affect me. But for the most part, — numbness ! 
 
 Such was the experience, the ordeal, through 
 which had lain the path of my evolution. 
 
 The immediate commencement appeared less 
 pathetic than what followed. In the immediate 
 commencement I was utterly dependent ; my sepa- 
 rately living body was utterly dependent. There was
 
 202 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 no choice in any matter. On earth the existence of 
 the infant had always struck me as extraordinarily 
 pathetic in its dependence. But now, the more 
 poignant pathos showed in the first stirrings of 
 independence, in the first attempts to use that in- 
 effably clumsy instrument, the body, — its disabilities, 
 its disadvantages, were so overpowering. Always pre- 
 occupied by its gross needs ! Unable to live through 
 more than a few hours unassisted ! Stiff and hard ! 
 And yet how fragile ! Continually in mortal danger ! 
 Slow and ineffective in movement, deaf to the whole 
 range of sounds except the coarsest and nearest ! 
 Blind to everything except the outer surfaces of a 
 few objects close at hand. Insensible to almost all 
 vibrations ! Stumbling, blundering ! . . . The vision 
 might have been less painful had I been alone in my 
 limitations. But I had been one of millions of deaf, 
 sightless, groping, maladroit entities that jostled each 
 other obstinately and uselessly in the midst of a 
 wondrous universe hidden from them. Yes, it had 
 the look of a tragedy ! 
 
 I saw myself, in my moving prison, starved, 
 nullified ; unable to transmit to my envelope the 
 perfected potential faculties that were within. 
 
 Even what my enveloping and inferior con- 
 sciousness did see and did hear and did feel, it saw 
 and heard and felt wrongly. It was continually 
 victimised by illusions and delusions. It had no
 
 THE PAST 20 
 
 o 
 
 perception of reality at all. It was wrong, wrong, 
 and grew more inextricably wrong. The main idea 
 underlying all its activity was wrong : the idea of 
 gathering in instead of giving out. Its desires multi- 
 plied. Its imagined well-being depended on a daily 
 increasing number of external things. That these 
 multifarious things in no manner actually contributed 
 to its well-being did not in the least discourage its 
 obstinacy. The direction was diametrically wrong, 
 and it hurried faster and faster in that direction, not 
 heeding the obstacles it met and the hurts it received. 
 Its wrong-headedness, seen as I saw it afterwards in 
 that tremendous calm of freedom, was barely credible. 
 Its steady cultivation of desire, with the inevitable 
 result of an accumulation of discontent, was distressing 
 for the mere stupidity of it. Then, the touching — yes, 
 the touching — confidence in the potency of externals 
 — externals that could never under any circumstances 
 be assimilated ! And, worst, the persistent, un- 
 wearied attempts towards self-aggrandisement of all 
 kinds, towards the creation of a wall between the self 
 and its fellows, towards the centralisation of the self 
 upon itself; whereas the sole way of progress was so 
 obviously in communion, in unifying, in the rich out- 
 pouring of the self. 
 
 I scanned all that incarnation, and could note 
 scarcely an odd hour here and there in the long 
 reaches of the years that had not been devoted to a
 
 2o 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 thickening of the prison-barriers, and to the weaving 
 of despair. Not one act in a million was an act of 
 communion, of outpouring. And so I followed the 
 course of my infatuated career till it came to a pause 
 on the death-bed in Palace Court Mansions ; and I 
 could see that unqualifiable sight. . . . Consequence 
 of an accident brought about by the morbid fever of 
 desire, by the appalling determination to aggrandise 
 and so isolate the self, by a ceaseless and violent 
 egotism. There I saw the coarser envelope lying ; 
 fit symbol in its grotesque and futile seeming ; sur- 
 rounded by the extraordinary and complex apparatus 
 which had been gradually collected together under 
 the fixed delusion that such playthings were an aid 
 to happiness ! The childishness of it ! The facile, 
 inconstant joy in trifles ! The inability to envisage 
 a simpler, deeper, and larger joy ! The strange con- 
 viction that bliss must be complex, changeful, fleet- 
 ing, dependent on externals, and strictly personal; 
 and that the absence of these qualities would involve 
 monotony and tedium ! . . . I saw that coarse shape 
 lying with the bandage round its head, and the coins 
 covering those eyes that had never seen, and won- 
 dered at the passionate epic which its own ineptitude 
 had prematurely closed. Oh, heedless one ! In vain 
 had those ears heard the beginning of wisdom which 
 somehow had got itself fairly translated into the 
 gross medium of speech :
 
 THE PAST 205 
 
 " The kingdom of heaven is within you ! " 
 And what of the imprisoned ' me ' ? I was almost 
 as I had been at the inception of the ordeal. Not 
 much worse, and very little better. I had been pro- 
 tected by the coarseness of the envelope, whose slow 
 and heavy vibrations could not affect me. The 
 immensely greater part of all that violence and that 
 superficial but genuine unhappiness had resulted in 
 nothing whatever, stultifying itself. The 'me' was 
 but atrophied by inactivity. And at moments, early 
 in that life, when the envelope had responded to the 
 incitement of youthful uncalculating generosities, and 
 later, in certain disinterested and careless outpourings 
 of ideas concerning beauty in music, — at those 
 moments the essential 'me' had developed in a swift 
 blossoming. The growth was little, gravely little. 
 But growth there had been, despite the apparent 
 froward conspiracy against it. 
 
 I saw the earthly envelope, precisely as it must 
 have been ages before — on that bed in Palace Court 
 Mansions, with its violet gaseous counterpart floating 
 still above it. My vision could not pursue it into 
 its decay and dissolution. My vision was arrested 
 at that point, attracted thenceforward to the vicissi- 
 tudes of the other envelope, more ethereal and 
 radiant. I gazed at the earthly envelope, not sadly, 
 not reproachfully. It had served.
 
 2o6 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 My second life, that long dalliance in a brighter 
 world of colour and illusion, seemed to me now to be 
 even more pathetic than the grosser brief career that 
 preceded it. At any rate, during the latter, no part 
 of my consciousness had ever imagined itself to be 
 in a heaven ; nor had mistaken its own creations for 
 independent organisms ; nor had drugged itself with 
 a conceit of its own perfection. I saw that this 
 second life, with all its relative fineness, had been 
 nothing but an exquisite atonement for the grand 
 error of the other. In the first gross years (up to 
 the moment when the coins were put on the eyes of 
 the heavy envelope), instead of working towards 
 freedom, I had steadily thickened the radiant walls 
 of that prison of the ' me.' Nearly all that elegant 
 preoccupation with art and beauty, all that refining 
 upon refinements, all that fastidious rejection of the 
 common ugly, had been based in desire, tending to 
 isolation instead of to communion. The bright 
 barriers that shut in the ' me ' had year by year 
 grown more impervious. 
 
 They had had to wear themselves away in the 
 fabrication of delicious but humiliating illusions. 
 And during the ages of this atonement, the hour of 
 my freedom had been delayed, until at last, amid 
 the wreck of those real dreams, the shell broke, and 
 I was born. 
 
 Now I could see the fragments of that shell
 
 THE PAST 207 
 
 floating in the universe which I had once deemed 
 luminous, and in its essence rapturously alive. . . . 
 Dull, garish, slack, inert ! . . . Strange, the formid- 
 able power of self-deception ! The strangest thing 
 of all in all that universe was not that I had accepted 
 a mere harsh glitter as absolute beauty, nor that I 
 had amused myself so childishly with vain toys, but 
 that I had remained so long and so completely in 
 the conviction that bliss could alone proceed from 
 the satisfaction of desire. 
 
 • • » m V m 
 
 All these matters I perceived simultaneously in 
 a single clear and enlightening flash of pure percep- 
 tion, during one of those periods of tremendous calm, 
 when existence itself seemed to be arrested in absolute 
 achievement. Then existence resumed, and those 
 visions of the past faded back into their true un- 
 importance. 
 
 The least marvellous of the beings in that state 
 was very marvellous, and consciously so. There 
 was a universal exultation in the use of fine faculties. 
 Degrees, however, existed. I counted myself mid- 
 way on the ladder of degrees. I beheld those who 
 were certainly below me, considerable in number. 
 But also I beheld those, considerable too in number, 
 who in responsiveness, in elasticity, in rapidity of 
 action, in the intense beauty of their outpouring, 
 were incomparably my superiors. And there were,
 
 208 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 apart, the greater intelligences. I was with the 
 large majority, I who in the double envelope of 
 bodies had masqueraded as a spiritual aristocratic ! 
 To think that I had failed to achieve a perfection 
 which others had achieved and which might have 
 been mine, grieved me. Grief was there. Grief was 
 in that rapture ; felt like a recondite dissonance in 
 a chord of emotion ; but pacified by the omnipresent 
 and ardent sympathy which was the very atmosphere. 
 And I approached the nucleus. Although at 
 any given moment few were entering it, the experi- 
 ence was withheld from none. Soon or late each 
 being vanished into the invisible splendour of the 
 nucleus, for a space of time long or short.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 No sensation of motion on my part. . . . But an 
 increase of light ; till light seemed gradually to 
 become the absence of light, the complete absence of 
 all phenomena whatever. . . . An ineffable solemnity 
 inspired me, and a sublime apprehension, in the 
 nature of fear, but greater than fear. . . . Disappear- 
 ance of the last of those perfect companions. . . . 
 Loneliness, and a torrent rushing under me. ... A 
 consciousness of the divine brooding which is without 
 and beyond form. . . . The supreme adventure ! 
 
 And then a cognition, startling, reassuring, that 
 this was not happening to me for the first time, that 
 I was no stranger in that solemnity, but a visitant 
 since everlasting. 
 
 And in the ecstatic void the vision of the whole 
 cycle of my existence began to be revealed to me, 
 rolling itself backwards into the unguessed deeps 
 cf the past, so that I might learn. I saw the endless 
 series of my lives, recurring and recurring in sequences 
 of three — the imprisonment in the double envelope, 
 
 209 p
 
 zio THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the partial freedom of the single radiant envelope, 
 and the freedom. The last an ageless realisation, 
 the second a long purgation, the first an ordeal brief 
 but full of fate ! 
 
 My perception was not now abruptly balked at 
 the birth of the human soul known on the earth as 
 Morrice Loring. I descried that out of which 
 Morrice Loring came. I saw, amid the recurring 
 epochs, incarnations far other than his. Morrice 
 Loring was no more to me than uncounted other 
 envelopes of flesh. I ceased to be Morrice Loring 
 and became a legion. These lives flashed up before 
 me, one anterior to another, mere moments between 
 the vast periods that separated them. They twinkled 
 and were gone, like shooting stars in the spirituality 
 of the night. But, in the perfection of my faculties, 
 I beheld them in detail as, before, I had beheld the 
 one life. I could distinguish the hairs on the rough 
 chest of a camel, the colours of the iridescence of 
 ice, the glint of a sun on a piece of stuff, the grada- 
 tions in the pupil of the eye of a young girl. I could 
 trace the fall and rise to and from an explosion of 
 wrath, the slow birth of a wish, and the spark of an 
 intuition, the sudden resolve of renunciations, the 
 lightest influence of an induced mood. And one 
 life was not clearer to me than another. And one 
 life was not more important to me than another. 
 All were equally indispensable and disciplinal. The
 
 THE GLIMPSE 211 
 
 variety of those imprisonments seemed endless. 
 Some were fevers of desire ; others had almost the 
 calmness of a final wisdom. Some were cruel ; some 
 were kind. In some the double barriers were so 
 thin that the immortal prisoner shone through them ; 
 and men wondered. And in the next the walls 
 might be hopelessly thick again. . . . Undulations 
 in the curve of evolution. . . . 
 
 But as the remoter past swam towards me in the 
 vision, the development of that prisoner which was 
 I showed unmistakable. He had seemed to be 
 helplessly isolated in the prison named Morrice 
 Loring, but in the light of comparison it was not 
 so. Far back in the chain his captivity had far more 
 closely resembled death, and his powers had far more 
 closely resembled utter impotence. I could see him 
 held fast in the grossness of bodies whose crude 
 savagery would have shocked Morrice Loring into 
 inanition. I could see him borne within organisms 
 of astounding coarseness that fought naked amid 
 primitive dangers to preserve the horror of their 
 lives. 
 
 Astounding, did I say ? Primitive ? . . . All this 
 was naught. All this was not even the beginning 
 of astonishment nor the end of the prime. Still 
 further in the past, I saw that divine prisoner within 
 the forms of roaming and solitary animals, in out- 
 rageous landscapes where there was no man, at an
 
 2i2 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 epoch when man existed only in the creative thought. 
 And the forms of those animals waxed and waned 
 in size, and waned and waxed, now leviathan, now 
 trivial; and becoming ever stranger and stranger. 
 And still at each dissolution of the prison a radiant 
 envelope escaped, and the prisoner escaped from the 
 radiance into the uncoloured light, and ultimately 
 gazed amid an invisible splendour, as now he gazed, 
 at the spectacle of his evolution, to gather the harvest 
 of experience. 
 
 And I saw that once, by some apparent hazard, 
 he was flung back into the identical prison from 
 which he had been set free, the envelope waiting 
 in suspension to receive the disconcerted prisoner. 
 And this accident occurred more than once. 
 
 I hurried flying through the vision of eternal 
 time, driven by the divine curiosity to learn the 
 origin of these ceaseless mutations, to arrive at the 
 first of them and know the absolute fount from 
 which I had sprung. I sought also to gaze forward, 
 into the future ; for I knew that when I should have 
 assimilated the latest of my experience I must enter 
 another prison, and I hoped that I might discern it, 
 even if dimly. But no ! This faculty was not mine. 
 And so I pressed backward. 
 
 And even all this was naught to that which, 
 lying further behind, rolled later into my view. 
 In the twinkling of recurrent incarnations, a point
 
 THE GLIMPSE 213 
 
 came when the immortal prisoner, subdivided, was 
 enclosed in many prisons simultaneously instead of 
 in one. Flying organisms. . . . Not birds. . . . 
 Flocks that winged clumsily over an earth desolate 
 and seemingly lifeless but for them. Congregations 
 of bodies bound by a collective will that dominated, 
 though not completely, the separate parts. . . . Play 
 of dull yet powerful instincts exercising themselves 
 in large, confused, and concerted activities ! . . . 
 And as the incarnations passed before me, each 
 disclosing an earlier one, the division of the prisoner 
 grew more and more minute, and the multitudinous 
 organisms more and more simple, homogeneous, and 
 less and less intelligent. . . . Until at length I was 
 scattered for instants incredibly brief, shed abroad 
 and yet indivisible, among myriads of almost exactly 
 similar organisms that performed one act and died 
 fulfilled. And the incarnations followed in a sequence 
 of accelerating speed. 
 
 The globe upon which they groped was liquid, 
 with here and there portions congealing. And my 
 prisons innumerable could only exist in the intense 
 heat which it exhaled. And this heat grew fiercer. 
 . . . And in the past of still remoter incarnations the 
 globe was a sphere of wreathing gases, white, but 
 with a gross whiteness. And the incarnations were 
 still swifter. And the gaseous sphere wreathed 
 larger, spinning amorphous, the abode of transient
 
 2i4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 life-manifestations of which I alone gave force to 
 millions. . . . The dizzy vision stirred me as I 
 watched it into a profound agitation. I thought : 
 " I am surely approaching the origin and fount of 
 uncreated perfection from which I sprung." 
 
 Then a cataclysm : a cosmic collision and disaster. 
 And, perceiving the phenomena in the inverse order 
 of their occurrence, I saw two worlds receding 
 terrifically from one another, stone-cold and rigid 
 as stone. 
 
 And myself, no more dispersed, but more than 
 ever rigorously captive, voyaging on the larger of 
 them ! 
 
 The incarnations now were comparatively very 
 long. And there might have seemed to be no 
 symptom of activity either in the prisoner or in 
 his prisoning envelopes. The world might have 
 been locked in an unthinkable death. But it was 
 not. It had only been approaching the impossible, 
 and I watched it, in my vision, back towards life. 
 I, as I saw myself, had at that stage sunk into a kind 
 of stupor ; I resembled a seed in winter. I bore 
 within me all the past and all the future, but 
 naught moved. And I watched myself, through again 
 innumerable incarnations, further through the re- 
 cesses of the past, back into an intense and complex 
 activity surpassing my highest condition previous to 
 the cataclysm, and of an entirely different order from
 
 THE GLIMPSE 215 
 
 it. And in a rapid stream of twinkling incarnations 
 I retraced a strange succession of civilisations from 
 their decline to their glory and from their glory to 
 their birth, on and on to an apogee of achievement. 
 
 And here, though that past was more distant than 
 the faintest speck of star left behind in the lightning 
 rush of systems through millions of aeons, I could see 
 it all to the minutest detail in my vision. . . . Other 
 beings ! Another race of beings ! Other landscapes ! 
 But the same laws ! And the same supreme law ! 
 I could still follow a wish to its birth. I could still 
 observe the ravages of desire ! If my prisons 
 were metamorphosed, I was still individually I, 
 yet possessing attributes which I had since lost or 
 which had since folded themselves within me in 
 dormancy. Then the curve of evolution, always 
 undulating, descended once more, and that world 
 too shot onwards into the past towards its sudden 
 birth in the heat of starry collision. And again I 
 saw two frigid spheres rushing into separation. 
 
 And I was still individual. 
 
 And thence backward the birth and death of 
 worlds twinkled in a sequence as rapid and as clear 
 as the sequence of my own incarnations had been. 
 And I could follow the vast arching of the curve 
 of evolution. And that curve, immense as it was, 
 dwindled to be one of countless undulations in an 
 infinitely mightier curve that gradually began to
 
 216 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 shape itself to my watching and awed sight. And 
 I saw myself, diviner, rising on the great curve whose 
 foot and whose summit were alike invisible, towards 
 the ultimate beginning. And I would thrill in 
 passionate anticipation of the revealing vision to 
 come. . . . Then the summit of the curve would 
 emerge clear, and it would bend downwards — 
 without having attained. ... To soar again ! I 
 could see that the modifications in me were pro- 
 found and tremendous, under the eternal ordeal of 
 desire and its purgation. But modifications of what ? 
 Pointing to what ? . . . Why . . . ? 
 
 Then I noticed that the shocks which marked 
 the birth and the death of universes grew less 
 violent, and their results less positive. The succeed- 
 ing days of civilisation and nights of black and icy 
 stupor were not so sharply divided each from each. 
 The wavy course of time was tranquillised into a 
 smoother path. And my incarnations were less im- 
 prisoning. The transitions from the state of freedom 
 to the radiant envelope, and from the radiant en- 
 velope to the grosser body — especially the latter — 
 were less abrupt and less clearly differentiated. 
 There came an epoch when I never, during the 
 complete cycle of an incarnation, entirely lost the 
 consciousness of my real, central self, when that 
 self never ceased knowingly and effectively to react 
 upon its envelopes. . . .
 
 THE GLIMPSE 217 
 
 The curve was now mounting upwards, and at an 
 angle bolder than any before. And in its flight the 
 curve undulated far less than it had ever done. 
 
 And on the lower physical plane there was nothing 
 solid. Matter remained fluid. And living organisms 
 had a fluidity that was nearer the gaseous than the 
 liquid. And the movement of these organisms was 
 beautiful in its yielding and swift plasticity, resembling 
 the activity of the radiant plane. And universes 
 intermingled in their vague orbits, mutually unharm- 
 ing. And the varieties of phenomena decreased in 
 number, and there proceeded a great and compre- 
 hensive simplification. 
 
 And then the disappearance of liquid matter 
 followed the disappearance of solid. And the ele- 
 ments resolved into one another, lightening ; and the 
 varieties of phenomena still decreased. And even 
 the lower physical plane acquired radiance, until its 
 highest intensity approached the lowest intensity of 
 the radiant plane, and for brief instants the two 
 might be indistinguishable. 
 
 I shook, watching the vision. For I now saw 
 myself indubitably reaching back to my far fount 
 and origin. I saw in myself the awaking out of 
 quiescence of wondrous qualities, and still more 
 wondrous. I saw in myself a creature nearer a 
 divine absolute than even the great intelligences 
 whose presence I felt around me in the nucleus.
 
 2i8 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 And my incarnations were no longer imprison- 
 ments, but gentle and soft veilings in transient clouds 
 of desire ; little intervals of illusion out of which 
 I emerged as from a waking dream. That terrible 
 perverse impulse towards separation, that impulse 
 which had so fatally vitiated the careers of Morrice 
 Loring and of his predecessors backward through 
 eternities of past, was scarcely felt now, — a mere 
 faint, fleeting tendency to draw away, vanquished in 
 an instant by the mighty original force of cohesion. 
 
 The universes of the lower plane became one, 
 and cataclysms and transitions and even movement 
 ceased. Nothing but a uniform vibration marked 
 the life of the plane. The elements, further resolving 
 into one another, had become one element. Light 
 grew, and, in the growth of light, the weight of 
 grossness faded. The unique gaseous element spent 
 itself in a continuous and ardent expansion. It had 
 no longer the materiality of gas. ... It escaped 
 from the dominion of its own perceptiveness, and 
 was lost in the plane of the radiant 
 
 It was the birth of matter that I had been 
 watching. 
 
 The curve of evolution shot still more boldly 
 upwards. 
 
 And in the radiant plane I witnessed myself 
 easily purging away the trivial illusions of what had 
 been the first of all my incarnations, — illusions
 
 THE GLIMPSE 219 
 
 removed scarce appreciably from absolute reality. 
 Then came the first incarnation — a reverie — and then 
 I was in the radiant plane again, where the activity 
 of desire was yet unknown. And then the iridescences, 
 the chromatic complexities of the radiant plane began 
 to simplify themselves in a growing brightness. And 
 the buoyant atmosphere of that plane, compared to 
 which the ether of gross physical conceptions is 
 heavy and rigid as metal, — this atmosphere in its 
 turn expanded towards its still less material source. 
 And its colours died in the dazzling luminance of 
 original light. Yet a little, and my vision had reached 
 a moment before even the radiant plane had begun 
 to exist. . . . 
 
 And the spirit had no home but its fellow-spirit. 
 
 We communed, equal in the first freshness of our 
 origin. And our communion was far completer than 
 that between the most advanced of the companions 
 whom I had quitted in order to enter into the 
 nucleus. And our joy more intense ! 
 
 The vision overpowered me. I saw myself in the 
 very dawn of the divine. The communion of those 
 unnameable creatures thrilled into a true coalescence, 
 and surpassed it. And the being that was myself 
 gazed with unclouded eye at the source of light and 
 awe, gazing within. And with a sigh of supreme 
 transport I began to yield up my melting individuality 
 in exchange for the final self-knowledge in which
 
 220 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 resides the clue to the enigma. ... I throbbed to the 
 prime pulsations of timeless existence. ... I saw . . . 
 I became . . . 
 
 The pulsations resolved themselves, with mysteri- 
 ous and formidable portent, into the vast reiterated 
 summoning of a titanic gong that announced the 
 unimagined. . . .
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 ACCIDENT 
 
 Extraordinarily skilled and efficient though my 
 senses were, I at first thought that the reverberations 
 of that unseen gong were a part of the vision which 
 was passing before me ; and I was mistaken. The 
 mere perception of my error shook me. I trembled 
 with forebodings, and I was distracted from the 
 vision. The vision sank away from my sight, — or 
 perhaps my faculties were now unable to hold it. 
 I was alone in the tremendous calm of the nucleus. 
 And under the persistent tolling I began to retrace 
 the past, — actually to retrace it. I had followed the 
 past up to its source, in my marvellous and revealing 
 vision. But that pursuit had been a vision, and for a 
 vision I positively knew it. But now I was myself, 
 in reality travelling backwards through the moments 
 — the years, the ages, perhaps — that I had spent in 
 the nucleus. And this happened against my wish, 
 against my command, against my instincts. I tried 
 passionately to arrest my course — the whole secret 
 force of my being yearned towards the vision whose 
 
 321
 
 222 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ineffable climax had been snatched from me — but I 
 was powerless. 
 
 The gong grew louder ; and it grew into a horrible 
 torture. It seemed to be ripping harshly through 
 the delicate veils that separate that which the eye 
 may view from that which is too vile for sight. Veil 
 after veil it seemed to tear asunder, growing still 
 louder. And then I made the discovery, which 
 debased the just pride in me, that the strident sound 
 of the gong was not in the plane of the nucleus. It 
 came from otherwhere. It was invading the for- 
 bidden and immaculate solemnity of the nucleus ; 
 sacrilegiously ; with an arrogant summons for me. 
 And I was afraid, dropping the incomparable dignity 
 which clothes those who enter the nucleus, dropping 
 my self-respect, and yielding openly to fear. I 
 struggled hysterically with the influence that was 
 pushing me backwards through my own history, 
 and reached out desperately to the faded vision. 
 Futile ! I myself, under the sinister iteration of the 
 gong, felt like an unholy trespasser in the invisible 
 splendour that surrounded me. . . . 
 
 The invisible deteriorated into the visible. I 
 emerged on the confines of the nucleus. Greater 
 intelligences loomed indistinct in their own effluence. 
 They watched me. They saw my plight. They 
 must have known that I was the victim of an obscene 
 intrusion, that every law had been challenged by the
 
 ACCIDENT 223 
 
 power which was seducing me away. In the effort 
 to obtain their sympathy I seemed to consume all 
 my vitality. But they made no sign. And I was 
 swept on, the gong still clanging its menace, and now 
 I saw the nucleus from without, as the indiscernible 
 core of the pure intensity of light that was the 
 atmosphere of the plane in which I had found 
 freedom. The entities who also had achieved that 
 plane were living still their shining existence of 
 emotion and reason wrought together in an exquisite 
 responsiveness. This was my natural home. Mine 
 was the right to remain there for ages yet. But I 
 was hurried on, passing inversely through all the 
 sensations which I had experienced there, tasting 
 bliss in torment. And to these companions too I 
 offered the tragic plaintiveness of my appeal for aid ; 
 but none answered. And under the enchantment of 
 the gong, I surged helpless along, clutching, fighting. 
 And at length the strokes of the gong sounded 
 fainter, and still fainter. I was re-entering the sleep 
 from which I had awakened into freedom, awakened 
 into birth. Life left me. But in the pre-natal state 
 I could hear the muffled, obstinate, destructive 
 summons of the gong. 
 
 The prismatic and airy fluid of the radiant plane 
 was vibrating about me when I became conscious 
 again. And the gong was relentlessly striking its
 
 224 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 note that jarred through me and through the atmo- 
 sphere. It was not yet satisfied. It still dragged 
 me implacably on. It was still rending the veils that 
 should not be rent. And as it had been foreign to 
 the plane beyond, so also was it foreign to the 
 radiant plane. I had followed its mandate, but it 
 still came from otherwhere, uncanny and horribly 
 discordant. 
 
 The medium in which I moved seemed to me 
 just as beautiful as when I had quitted it. . . . That 
 was part of the tragedy. ... I had no sensation of 
 being imprisoned in something heavier, duller, less 
 responsive than myself. . . . That too was part of 
 the tragedy. My consciousness was transferred to 
 the thin, worn shells of radiant matter that enveloped 
 the true entity which had returned from beyond. 
 These shells were the only conscious ' me.' My 
 memory of the divine birth and the divine adventure 
 and the glimpse was already dimmed and tarnished. 
 But it nevertheless remained in my consciousness, 
 and by it — not by direct perception — I knew that the 
 authentic and eternal ' me ' was a fast and silent 
 prisoner within the external shells of consciousness. 
 I no longer struggled backwards towards that from 
 which I had been dragged. I was deeply aware of 
 the hopelessness of such a struggle. But I did fight to 
 remain where I was, in the moment of pulsating calm, 
 the moment of the extinction of desire and illusion.
 
 ACCIDENT 225 
 
 I could not. The gong crashed through the 
 mystic chromatic barriers and found me. 
 
 And at a dizzy speed I, unwilling and fiercely 
 protesting, raced back over my own footsteps in the 
 great field of time. An age was as an instant ; 
 eternities were as an instant. The shells of the 
 living prison grew. She appeared. The beautiful 
 landscapes appeared. The gardens appeared, and 
 the palace. And the music tinkled from an elfin 
 echo into the full resonance of sublime art. The 
 recumbent figures in the gardens arose and spoke 
 once more with their refined and charming voices. 
 The amazing books re-peopled the shelves of the 
 gleaming palace. . . . And my memory, though 
 languishing, said to me : " All these are tawdry 
 playthings." And I knew that they were, while 
 enjoying them. In the periods of reverie I knew 
 this. But I had to retrace, and I did retrace, all the 
 doubts, hesitations, and counterfeit delights through 
 which I had passed on my way to my freedom. I 
 yielded to illusion, aware of its illusiveness. 
 
 All that came and was gone. Those heavens 
 shot away beneath my furious flight ; vanished into 
 the future, while I faced the past. My idyll with 
 the perfect woman of my desire's creation was 
 resumed from end to beginning in a flash. All her 
 lovely attitudes, surrenders, acquiescences, discretions, 
 audacities were folded into a moment. From the 
 
 Q
 
 226 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 woman she returned into the girl, and the act that 
 made her was undone, and she was not. And I was 
 utterly alone again in the vibrant and iridescent air, 
 watching the changing colours of it, and the gorgeous- 
 ness of my own envelope, in a naive wonder. And 
 my memory said to me : " This is garish. This is 
 naught. This is death." And I said : " If only I 
 could remain here, where I am ! " 
 
 The gong still boomed its call, but louder. 
 
 A stupor slowly grasped me in its drowsy, 
 clinging arms. I fought to loosen myself, for I was 
 thrilled with horror at the apprehension of what 
 awaited me if I could not resist. In vain ! . . . All 
 phenomena faded save the inexorable uproar of the 
 gong. 
 
 • • • * • • 
 
 Then, roused by something offensive and intru- 
 sive, I perceived, monstrously, a pyramidal summit 
 sticking up out of vacancy into the radiant air. I 
 stared at it, dazed, puzzled, searching in memory for 
 the answer to its conundrum. It was not strange to 
 me. It was disconcertingly familiar. I fancied that 
 the clangour of the gong came from it, but it was not 
 the home of the gong, though now the sound was 
 deafeningly near. The pyramid was tinted in multi- 
 farious dead opaque colours — earthly colours — a 
 travesty of the rainbow, as the rainbow would have 
 been a travesty of hues of that gleaming atmosphere.
 
 ACCIDENT 227 
 
 Impossible to imagine aught more utterly revolting 
 than the harsh dark wound made by the pyramid in 
 ethereal translucency. I stared at it, full of a terrible 
 leisure and still haunted by the clamour of the 
 summons. I was not flying backwards now. The re- 
 versal of time had ceased to operate, and the moments 
 as they passed were no longer contrary to me. And 
 imperceptibly the recognition of the pyramid per- 
 meated my affrighted consciousness like a disease. 
 It was the upper portion of the Albert Memorial, 
 an immoderate unsightliness which even in the 
 most squalid hours of the earthliest Morrice Loring 
 I would always take every possible measure to 
 avoid. 
 
 And I saw momentarily troops of the radiant 
 floating by. They were departing. I, by reason of 
 some accidental propensity in my original being, had 
 escaped too soon and was returning. Not for the 
 first time — according to that revealing vision of mine 
 yonder, was this casualty occurring to me ! 
 
 Then I saw the sun — your sun, looming sombre 
 like a dead star in my radiance. Then the lower 
 plane supervened, shutting off the radiance, and I 
 saw the faint roofs of houses, with thousands of 
 ghostly tin cowls gibbering crooked and bent on 
 their chimneys. And in a canyon between two 
 precipices of houses I saw two streams of people 
 wending in opposite directions, doll-like, afar off and
 
 228 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 beneath me. Knightsbridge, Parkside, Piccadilly. 
 . . . The effect was exceedingly bizarre, for the gross 
 body of every one of these dolls was illuminated by 
 the radiant body, scintillant and prismatic. And 
 though the sun shed its brightness of a summer 
 morning, the light of the sun was as darkness to the 
 refulgence of these dolls. The spectacle resembled 
 a procession of torches moving of their volition amid 
 dim architectures. . . . Strange, that those vivid 
 envelopes should excite no wonder! . . . Incredible 
 blindness ! 
 
 I knew now the significance of the gong. And I 
 passionately denied it. " No ! " I protested in a fever 
 of refusal, " I will not go. Nothing shall force me 
 to go. I will wander here for ever rather than go. 
 It is against all nature that I should go." 
 
 But I went, slowly, surely, gnashing out my 
 reluctance. ... I went. . . . 
 
 I was in my study, quivering near the window. 
 The gong ceased. 
 
 I said to myself, without surprise : " That clock 
 has struck eleven ! " I knew that the clock had struck 
 eleven. During all the ages of my descent from the 
 crisis of the unfinished revealing vision, the clock in 
 the vestibule had struck eleven. In the background 
 of my exasperated consciousness, I could hear it 
 ticking. But I would not listen to it ticking. Then 
 I could not. I could not regard with curiosity even
 
 ACCIDENT 
 
 229 
 
 the familiarities of my study. For the whole of my 
 faculties were instantly monopolised. 
 
 It still lay there, — it ! And the door showing the 
 bed in the bed-chamber was still open. It still lay 
 there, with the penny on one eye and the half-crown 
 on the other, and the handkerchief supporting the 
 flaccid jaw. . . . Obscene ! Not meant to be looked 
 upon ! But I could look upon nothing else. 
 
 " Never ! " I seemed to cry, fainting in a fearful 
 nausea. " Never ! " 
 
 Putrescent clay ! Rigid, blighting prison ! Grave 
 of all the finer perceptions ! Extinguisher of light ! 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 Abhorrent basilisk, drawing me, drawing me, by a 
 hypnotism a thousand-fold more odious than that of 
 the eye ! . . . Drawing me ! . . . 
 
 A noise in my muffled ears. Noise of a coin 
 rolling slowly and interminably along a polished floor, 
 circling, and then flopping to rest on its side.
 
 BOOK III 
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 RETURN 
 
 I WAS alone in the bedroom. And I was glad to 
 find myself alone. For I felt self-conscious, I felt 
 almost ashamed, of my return. I had been dead ; I 
 had received the treatment accorded to the dead. 
 My co-dwellers in the flat had adjusted their minds 
 to the fact that I was dead. Shame is a word too 
 strong for the description of my state. But I was 
 aware that I had created an exceedingly awkward 
 situation, which would involve much social discom- 
 posure. Hence solitude was grateful to me. I said 
 to myself: "But of course a corpse is left alone!" 
 The sinister idea that I might, on my return, have 
 opened my eyes in a place quite other than this 
 bedroom, might have vainly struggled against un- 
 yielding wood, utter darkness, and subterranean 
 silence, — this idea did not even occur to me until 
 hours later. 
 
 But scarcely had the coin ceased to roll on the
 
 RETURN 231 
 
 polished floor when I heard noises in the bathroom. 
 The door leading to the bathroom was at the other 
 end of the bedroom from my bed, and on the same 
 wall as the head of the bed. So that, as I lay, I 
 could not see that door without turning on my side 
 and twisting slightly. I knew, however, that it must 
 be open. Then I heard footsteps, quick, hesitating, 
 irregular. Then silence, and then a recommence- 
 ment of the footsteps. Inez ! . . . She was in the 
 room. She was looking at me from my right, at a 
 distance of about sixteen feet. I felt her presence. 
 My eyes were open, but I did not move. Yet it 
 seemed to me that I was capable of the effort of such 
 a movement of the head as would have brought her 
 within my field of vision. There was a conflict of 
 volitions within me. I wished to meet her eyes, and 
 I feared to meet her eyes. So I lay inert, but 
 unmistakably blinking at the ceiling. I could hear 
 her respiration. She came, stumbling, nearer to me. 
 She passed round the foot of her own bed, seized it 
 with one hand ; and we looked at each other. I said 
 to myself : "This is a very trying moment for both 
 of us." Her appearance startled me. She wore a 
 plain morning dress, nearly new, and it had been put 
 on with fastidious care, but on the front of the 
 corsage was a large fresh yellow stain. Her hair 
 was disordered. Her features seemed to have been 
 modified less by grief than by acute anxiety. And,
 
 232 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 now, she seemed to be less astonished than caught — 
 caught in some secret act. Her lips were extra- 
 ordinarily swollen, and vermilion red even to 
 rawness. 
 
 Her mouth formed to speak : but she said nothing. 
 She was about to laugh, she was about to cry ; but 
 she did neither. I felt poignantly sorry for her. But 
 I could not show my pity ; could not smile nor 
 speak ! I was held back from doing so by some 
 deep instinct of restraint. Her eyes wandered, and 
 stopped at a particular point on the floor. I knew 
 that she was looking at the fallen coin. Suddenly 
 she swooped down on the coin, came to her knees, 
 lay nearly flat, and clumsily arose again, the coin in 
 her hand. She seemed ready to faint. I wanted to 
 advise her calmly to be as calm as she possibly could. 
 But I could not persuade myself to speak. 
 
 Then with another sudden hysteric movement, 
 she plunged towards my bed, and knelt down — or 
 dropped to her knees — at my side. I did not move. 
 The other coin had lodged in a fold between the 
 pillow and the sheet. She snatched at it. The two 
 coins clinked together in her hand. She half raised 
 herself, clutching at the bed, and began fumbling 
 round my head with her hands ; owing to the coins 
 she could only use finger and thumb of her right 
 hand. I wondered what she was doing, but I did 
 not stir nor protest, though I was very sensitive to
 
 RETURN 233 
 
 contacts and hated to be handled — for example by 
 a barber. Then I understood. She was untying the 
 handkerchief which she had knotted round the jaw 
 of her dead husband to keep it from falling. She 
 drew it away at last, and seemed to try to hide it 
 behind her. 
 
 " I put this round your head because I thought 
 you might be cold," she said, in a peculiar voice, the 
 voice, I should have supposed, of a person in severe 
 physical pain. 
 
 Naturally she desired to conceal from me that 
 she had taken me for dead. It was a feeble attempt 
 at deception, quite unconvincing, an obvious failure. 
 It would not have deceived me, I think, even if I 
 had not watched her with my own eyes tie the 
 handkerchief round the head of the corpse, and seal 
 its eyes with the coins. But it was the best she 
 could accomplish in her instinctive shame. 
 
 " Oh ! I'm not cold," I whispered. 
 
 This was all we said ; this was the whole of our 
 exchange. No splendid phrase, bursting from the 
 heart ! No expressive gesture ! No pathetic cry ! 
 Just a poor little stammering lie, and a banal 
 remark ! Yet she had wept passionately on the 
 body of that corpse, and I was assuredly full of an 
 immense sympathy for her. 
 
 Without any warning of any kind she turned 
 and ran, staggering, back into the bathroom. She
 
 234 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 literally ran. And as she went her whole body 
 seemed to heave in a great physical crisis. She 
 banged the door of the bathroom, but it did not 
 latch. I continued to hear noises in the bathroom, 
 now violent, now low and prolonged. I was left 
 alone, neglected, ignored. I had foreseen that my 
 return to life might produce strange manifestations 
 in Inez, but the manifestation which it actually 
 did produce was strange beyond my prevision. I 
 perceived once again, as often I had perceived before, 
 that the effect of intense emotion on the human 
 organism is incalculable. 
 
 " The worst is over now ! " I thought, with 
 relief. 
 
 I glanced about the bedroom, and my eye rested 
 with its old satisfaction on the furniture and the 
 decoration of the room. In front of me, placed 
 specially so that I could always see it as I lay in 
 bed, was a reproduction of Velasquez' "Lady with 
 a Fan." It seemed to me as beautiful as ever. And 
 the light that came through the ground glass of the 
 window seemed to me as beautiful as ever. Often 
 had I watched that window gradually betray the 
 dawn. Often had I deeply felt that pure silvery form- 
 less light was unsurpassable as a source of ecstatic 
 aesthetic pleasure. And I felt exactly the same 
 now. I did not regard the supernal beauties from 
 which I had been exiled as a dream, or as in the
 
 RETURN 235 
 
 nature of a dream. I knew that they were all as 
 real as the coins which Inez had picked up, and 
 as the bell-cord at my shoulder. I remembered 
 that, during the period when I experienced those 
 other beauties, every earthly phenomena had appeared 
 to me gross, ugly, tawdry. Yet now my bedroom, 
 and this common earthly light, did not lose by any 
 comparison. 
 
 Nor had I the sensation of being a prisoner in 
 my body. And my body did not seem heavy, hard, 
 and unresponsive. I was not surprised that I had 
 no perception of any kind of a radiant body enclosing 
 the opaque. A few minutes earlier I had seen, 
 veritably seen, all the wayfarers in Knightsbridge 
 incandescent like torches shaming the sun, and had 
 marvelled at their blindness to themselves. But I 
 did not marvel now at my own blindness. I said to 
 myself, as of another person : " He has lost conscious- 
 ness. It is only the outermost parts of his conscious- 
 ness that are now active." But I did not feel this. 
 I only reasoned it out. 
 
 I was not tragically grieved at my expulsion from 
 those other planes. I was sad, but gently, mildly ; 
 with a melancholy that was almost agreeable to 
 savour. There was in me no fierce longing, no 
 impatient rebellion. And I did not immoderately 
 regret my lost faculties — of vision, hearing, under- 
 standing, emotional elasticity, and nobility of
 
 236 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 sentiment. I did not consider myself blind, deaf, 
 stupid, or ignoble. 
 
 Perhaps I was stayed by the thought : 
 
 " I shall go back. Nothing can prevent me from 
 going back sooner or later." 
 
 Yes, this thought gave me a profound sense of 
 security, — it was so sure. It was a rock. The 
 wonder of the miracle of which I had been the 
 subject solemnised me more and more as the minutes 
 passed. I — not another, but I ! — had been destined 
 to this incomparably sublime adventure. Between 
 the thought of my ultimate security and the dizzy 
 thought of the grandeur of the dread privilege that 
 had been mine, I thrilled. And this too was a 
 precious and exquisite experience. 
 
 My body began slowly to assert itself. I had no 
 pain ; I was not conscious of fatigue ; nor, since I made 
 no effort to move, of weakness. But, without any 
 pang of hunger, I was aware that my body needed 
 food. After a time this bodily desire destroyed all 
 my other sensations, and monopolised me. I argued : 
 " Why trouble about food ? Why not sink away 
 again ? Food ! . . . How ridiculously unimportant ! " 
 But argument was futile. I wanted food, and I 
 wanted attention, and it seemed as if I had been 
 completely forgotten by everybody. There was no 
 sound now from the bathroom. Was I to be neg- 
 lected for ever ? It was astounding that Inez should
 
 RETURN 237 
 
 leave me so. I began to see that I must help myself 
 by performing some definite act. And I shaped the 
 scheme of lifting my right arm and seizing the bulb 
 at the end of the bell-cord and pushing against the 
 little ivory knob on the bulb. I envisaged this enter- 
 prise as something complicated and difficult, as some- 
 thing requiring courage and energy, as something 
 decisive and final, only to be done under extreme 
 stress of circumstances. And just as I was prepared 
 to raise my hand, I heard voices. And I stopped, as 
 it were guiltily, holding all my frame intensely 
 immobile, like a thief disturbed. 
 
 The voices were approaching, along the passage 
 which led from the kitchen to the vestibule. The 
 principal door of the bedroom was ajar. The voices 
 continued on the other side of that door, in the 
 vestibule ; quiet, awed, and — one of them at any rate 
 — loquacious. This was the voice of my cook, a 
 woman whom I had not heard utter a dozen words 
 in a month, a woman of whom my impression was 
 that she never spoke. 
 
 "Yes," I heard my cook say, "Marion — that's 
 the parlour-maid — she's gone to bed. Mistress sent 
 her. And really between you and me she was fit for 
 nothing, didn't know what she was doing of, no more 
 than that clock — not so well. As soon as ever eight 
 o'clock struck mistress sent me for the porter to take 
 two telegrams, one to master's sister — so the porter
 
 2 3 8 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 told me — and another to Captain Hulse — that's a 
 friend of the family. I don't know why she didn't 
 telephone to Captain Hulse. They're always a- 
 telephoning. I suppose she couldn't fancy it — telling 
 him over the telephone as master was gone. It was 
 when the porter happened to mention to me as you 
 were in the Mansions, laying out those poor twins on 
 the first floor, as I first thought how handy it would 
 be for you to step in here, you being close to, like, if 
 you understand me." 
 
 " Quite," said the other voice, drily, — it appeared 
 to be a better educated voice. " Where is your mis- 
 tress, Mrs. — what's the name ? " 
 
 " Loring." My cook's voice dropped : " I expect 
 she's lying down a bit in the drawing-room. ... So 
 I told her you were in the Mansions. And you may 
 not believe me, but she'd never given a thought to 
 his being laid out, like ! It hadn't crossed her mind 
 as he ought to be laid out as soon as might be. . . i 
 However, I needn't telljdw that ! No! She gave a 
 regular start. I told her it might be too late for him 
 to be laid out properly even now, but " 
 
 " When did he die ? " 
 
 I heard my cook suddenly weeping. "Two 
 o'clock, it seems. Two o'clock or hardly. And the 
 doctor ain't been since. Eh ! I don't know what ! 
 All at sixes and sevens. There's nothing like a 
 corpse for putting everything at sixes and sevens.
 
 RETURN 239 
 
 So mistress told me to go down to the first floor, 
 and her compliments and would you step up here as 
 soon as you'd finished down there. I don't know 
 whether I shouldn't prefer you to go and get it done 
 without disturbing her, poor dear! I always think 
 it's best as these things should be done quiet, like. 
 
 Of course you know best " Tears again. 
 
 " Which is the room ? " asked the other voice. 
 " It's here," said my cook. " He makes as fine a 
 corpse as ever you see ! And you'll say so, ma'am, 
 though of course my experience is nothing to 
 yours." 
 
 She pushed open the door. 
 
 Had it been possible, I would have spared my 
 cook the ordeal that awaited her within the doorway. 
 I felt extremely sorry for her. But I was helpless. 
 I saw her stoutish figure in the doorway and her 
 tearful, excellent face ; and behind her another 
 woman, younger and thinner, in a cloak and 
 bonnet. 
 
 " Eh ! " the cook faltered as her eye met mine. 
 She seemed to waver backwards. All the colour left 
 her face. 
 
 "Now, cook," I reassured her, in a tone weak but 
 persuasive. " Bring me some milk and soda, please, 
 at once." 
 
 " Nay, nay ! " she moaned, withdrawing. " Him 
 asking like that for milk and soda ! He's asking for
 
 2 4 o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 milk and soda ! . . . I suppose it's no use you waiting 
 now, ma'am. . . . And there's the front-door bell. 
 I do pray and beseech Almighty God it's the doctor. 
 All sixes and sevens ! " 
 The door was pulled to.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 THE MYSTERY 
 
 THE voices of the doctor and of Mary in the vestibule 
 reassured me. By chance these two must have 
 arrived simultaneously — met perhaps in the entrance 
 hall of the Mansions. There was now no necessity 
 for me to take on my own shoulders the burden of 
 our servants' nerves. (Already I was foreseeing that 
 the cook would be running off to wake Marion with 
 the news of my existence, and that the atmosphere 
 of the flat would thus be doubly charged with panic.) 
 Nor need I harass myself concerning the mystery of 
 my wife's strange seclusion in the bathroom. Both 
 the doctor and Mary were the kind of people who 
 are never overmatched by an emergency, with whom 
 the proud consciousness is always present that nothing 
 can rob them of their common-sense and their wits. 
 Their influence on the situation was at once manifest. 
 After a few excited sentences from the cook, there 
 was a sudden hush, caused no doubt by an imperative 
 gesture from Mary. The bedroom door was noise- 
 lessly latched, and I heard no more. Mary and the 
 
 241 R
 
 242 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 doctor had evidently led the cook away into the 
 dining-room (which was furthest from the bedroom) 
 in order to learn in detail the astounding facts which 
 the frightened woman had briefly disclosed in a 
 hysterical cascade at the front door. 
 
 It was a situation which would put a strain on 
 even their self-possession. 
 
 I heard a faint stirring in the bathroom. 
 
 After a few minutes the bedroom door opened 
 gently. Again I had that feeling of awkwardness, 
 as if I had done something in respect to which my 
 attitude ought to be slightly apologetic. Mary 
 entered, followed by the doctor. They bore them- 
 selves well — they had arranged on their faces an 
 admirable imitation of perfect calmness — but they 
 were certainly at the limit of their powers. 
 
 " Well, Morrice," Mary greeted me quietly. " It 
 seems you took advantage of my early departure last 
 night to go and be very ill. . . . Yet he doesn't 
 look so very ill, after all, does he, doctor ? " 
 
 I could have wept — because I was so touched by 
 the proud adequacy of Mary's bearing. I knew 
 Mary ; I knew what she was concealing of emotion ; 
 I lived in her for an agitated instant, — and I say 
 that I could have wept from sympathy with 
 her. 
 
 I smiled. They were on either side of the bed, 
 glancing down at me and hesitating.
 
 THE MYSTERY 243 
 
 "Let's have a look at him," said the doctor 
 gruffly. 
 
 " Where's Inez ? " Mary demanded. 
 
 " In the bathroom," I whispered. 
 
 And at the same moment there was a peculiar 
 and disconcerting noise in the bathroom, and then 
 we heard a moan. 
 
 " Poor thing ! " Mary exclaimed. " I'll go to her." 
 
 " Now, my boy," said the doctor, when he and 
 I were alone. " Keep still. Just let me examine 
 that precious heart of yours, will you ? " 
 
 While his head was bent to my breast, I said : 
 
 " She thought I was dead, you know." 
 
 " H'm ! " he said, lifting his head, and taking my 
 pulse. "So it seems. It's a mistake people make 
 sometimes. I should have come long ago, but I 
 was kept by a midwifery case — seven blessed hours, 
 if you please. . . . Well," he gazed at me quizzically. 
 "You're a long way off dead. But let me tell you," 
 he added grimly, as though calling back a little lad 
 who was running too joyously off after being acquitted 
 of some serious charge, " let me tell you you've 
 had a darned near shave, my friend ! " 
 
 A darned near shave ! For him, my adventure 
 was to be summed up as a darned near shave. All 
 those wonders, miracles, ecstasies, revealings, terrors 
 — unique and unutterable — were a darned near shave. 
 I had seen the infinite, I had travelled through
 
 244 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 millions of years and come back through millions 
 of years, I had had knowledge of myself, I was made 
 sacred to myself and set apart, every human being 
 was made sacred to me and set apart, — and it was 
 a darned near shave ! But how could he guess ? 
 How could he surmise, he preoccupied always by 
 the heavy labours of his profession ? I felt sure 
 that, could I only begin a narration to him of my 
 darned near shave, in the right key, could I only 
 induce in him the right receptive mood, nobody 
 among my friends would be more imaginatively 
 impressed than he, and nobody more sympathetically 
 curious and enquiring. But I should never be able 
 to begin the narration. I should never be able to 
 speak about it. The risks of a misunderstanding, of 
 a failure to communicate, would be too great. I 
 would not court the wound that incredulity might 
 inflict. I could not have borne to see hiding behind 
 the doctor's controlled face his ironic reflections upon 
 the deluding power of delirium and dream. And 
 just as no one could be more sympathetic, no one 
 was more capable than the doctor of a blasting 
 satiric silence when his terrible common-sense 
 happened to be affronted. No ! I should have to 
 accept the definition of a darned near shave. I did 
 accept it ; there and then I reconciled myself to 
 it. . . . The fault was not the doctor's ; but the 
 deprivation was his, and I was sorry for him.
 
 THE MYSTERY 245 
 
 "I think I'd better have something to eat," I 
 said. 
 
 " Oh, you do, do you ? " said he. 
 
 He could not hide his joy in the interestingness 
 of my case. His pleasure pleased me. It was a pure 
 scientific pleasure, untinged by desire. I thought 
 how fine and how naive he was. 
 
 "When did you — come to yourself? " he asked. 
 
 "About — I don't know — a few minutes since, 
 I suppose." 
 
 "Well, we'll see about getting something into 
 you." He cleared his throat as if preparing to call 
 for someone, and glanced at the door, at the bell- 
 cord, and at the bathroom door. His spectacles 
 gleamed momentarily white. 
 
 The bathroom door, which Mary in her immense 
 discretion had closed, was opened again, and Mary 
 appeared. 
 
 " Oh ! I say, Mrs. ," said the doctor, unable 
 
 to recall my sister's name. " This individual is as 
 right as a trivet." 
 
 Mary did not smile. 
 
 " Can you come here a minute, doctor ? " she 
 asked gravely. 
 
 " Yes," said he. 
 
 They both vanished into the bathroom. Once 
 more I was neglected, ignored. Inez must be ill. 
 The night and the morning, and that bo^y of mine,
 
 246 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 and my resurrection, must have been too much for 
 Inez. It seemed to me shocking that events should 
 compel a woman of Inez' temperament to go through 
 the spiritual convulsions and perturbations to which 
 she must have been subjected. The idea horrified 
 me, as the mental picture of a conscious dog vivisected 
 will horrify. I could feel all that Inez must have 
 suffered. I thought that a long future of continuous 
 happiness could scarcely compensate her for her 
 sufferings. I wished ardently to arrange somehow 
 a due recompense for her. 
 
 Mary appeared. 
 
 " We're just going to bring Inez in here," said 
 she, in a tone carefully casual. " She isn't well." 
 
 I expected that they would lead Inez in. But 
 Inez was carried in, stretched out horizontally, the 
 doctor at her shoulders and Mary at her feet. They 
 laid her on her bed. 
 
 " But " I began. 
 
 "Don't worry yourself," the doctor interrupted 
 me. " You can't do anything. She's unwell." 
 Then to Mary : " Chalk 's what I want. And 
 limewater. And then hot flannels and so on. 
 Chalk first." 
 
 " Yes," said Mary, and went out silently. 
 
 The doctor also rushed out of the room into 
 my study, and returned with a large threefold 
 screen, with which he shut off my bed from the
 
 THE MYSTERY 247 
 
 other one. Behind the screen I could now hear 
 his movements, and the moans of Inez. Articles 
 of her clothing were flung out beyond the shelter 
 of the screen. Excitement and movement increased. 
 People came in and out of the bedroom. The screen 
 hid the principal door, but I could hear Mary, and I 
 could hear the cook, and then I could hear Marion. 
 The doctor gave orders to everybody, and Mary 
 gave orders to the servants — polite, but coldly 
 incisive and peremptory. And I could hear the 
 pouring out of liquids, and creakings of the bed, 
 and cries from Inez, and Mary's soothing reassurances 
 to her. 
 
 " What's that ? " I heard Mary demand. 
 
 "It's milk and soda for master, Mrs. Dean," 
 the cook's voice replied proudly. " He asked for 
 it. Shall I give it him ? " 
 
 "Yes. Give him anything he wants," said the 
 doctor curtly. 
 
 The cook made her appearance in front of the 
 screen, benevolently triumphant with the milk and 
 soda. In the midst of all the commotion caused 
 by her mistress, she had remembered my request, 
 and she was proud of having remembered my 
 request. When I had drunk the milk and soda, 
 
 "There!" she murmured, satisfied, and ventured 
 to arrange my pillow. She had recovered from her 
 fright, and was now burning to atone for it. She
 
 248 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 was ready to melt in her solicitude. I smiled and 
 was rewarded, and it seemed to me pathetic that 
 such a trifle as a smile from me should produce in 
 her such delight. She dared not remain longer by 
 my side, and so reluctantly departed, the empty 
 glass rattling on the plate. I wished that I could 
 better have made her comprehend the degree of my 
 appreciation. 
 
 Mary appeared. She had taken off her hat, and 
 was wearing a servant's white apron, and a pair of 
 slippers. She raised her hand to enjoin silence in 
 respect to events on the other side of the screen. 
 I nodded. " You all right ? " she whispered. I 
 nodded again. There was almost silence now on 
 the other side of the screen. The doctor appeared. 
 
 " Look here," he said, very quietly. " I think 
 if this young man could be removed to the sofa 
 in the drawing-room . . . Can you fix him up 
 sheet and pillows on the sofa ? We shall be able 
 to look after him better there. Not that he wants 
 much looking after, now." 
 
 " Yes," said Mary. " I think that's a very good 
 idea." 
 
 My transference to the sofa in the drawing-room 
 was executed with the maximum of celerity and 
 comfort under the direction of these two. I dis- 
 covered that I could walk with their aid. And 
 as I passed slowly through the study, I felt like
 
 THE MYSTERY 249 
 
 one who passes through a country unvisited since 
 childhood. So I lay in the drawing-room, and was 
 abandoned again. The cook brought me more 
 food. 
 
 "Will you tell Mrs. Dean I want to speak to 
 her, if she can spare half a minute ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," the cook agreed heartily. 
 
 During the brief time that the doctor and Mary 
 had remained with me in the drawing-room, super- 
 intending my installation, I had waited for one or 
 the other of them to enlighten me as to Inez. 
 I knew that Inez was suffering from more than 
 a mere indisposition consequent upon nervous shock 
 and strain. But neither of them said a word. We 
 were alone together in the drawing-room, where 
 Inez could not overhear, and yet neither of them 
 had said a word. And somehow I had not been 
 able to bring myself to ask. Strange ! Strange 
 on their part and on mine ! 
 
 Now the mystery grew, and seemed to pervade 
 the whole flat. I could not support it. 
 
 Mary entered, quickly, quietly, with questioning 
 face. 
 
 " I say, Mary," I asked her as cheerfully as I 
 could. " Is anything really the matter, there ?" 
 
 " Where ? " She stiffened. 
 
 "Inez?" 
 
 " She's certainly ill."
 
 2 5 o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 "What's up?" 
 
 Her features became severe, refusing. She could 
 not help it. It was in her character to decline to 
 yield to the whims of a patient who ought to have 
 no will of his own. It was in her character, in a 
 time of difficulty or crisis, to act in the best interests 
 of those weaker than herself, gently but ruthlessly 
 regardless of their unreasonable wishes. The instinct 
 in her was deep. She — or she and the doctor in 
 council — had decided that it would be better for 
 me not to occupy myself with Inez' condition — 
 had they not removed me from the bedroom ? — 
 hence I was on no account to occupy myself with 
 it. I was to be content with such information as 
 was considered proper for me. There was no 
 danger for me, and I was to be treated strictly 
 according to reason. I could read all that on her 
 face. And yet she wanted to tell me ; she brimmed 
 with the mysterious fact withheld. Only the stern 
 instinct prevented her from brimming over. 
 
 "I — perhaps the doctor will be popping in here 
 soon," she said, and moved away. " You all right ? " 
 she added at the door, smiling seriously. 
 
 " Yes, thanks," I said. I knew how she felt, 
 and how the instinct of harshness, under the guise 
 of reason, influenced her conduct. I was often 
 conscious of the same instinct in myself. 
 
 The doctor did presently come in.
 
 THE MYSTERY 251 
 
 "The truth is," he said, sitting down on a chair 
 near the sofa, "your wife's been drinking oxalic 
 acid. I should say she must have drunk about 
 three penn'orth of that stuff. I found the bottle in 
 the bathroom. From what I can learn she must 
 have drunk it about half-past ten or so this 
 morning." 
 
 I said nothing. 
 
 " It's just as well you should know," he added. 
 
 "You see, it's so handy, oxalic acid is," he 
 explained. "Every woman keeps it for cleaning 
 straw hats, or taking stains out of linen. It's so 
 infernally handy." 
 
 " But do you mean to say it's fatal ? " I asked. 
 
 " Not always," he replied. " I may pull her 
 through." 
 
 The tone was not convincing, nor apparently was 
 it meant to be convincing. His eye, when it caught 
 mine, seemed to be saying : " Whatever the vagaries 
 of human nature, the true philosopher is never 
 surprised by them. And one vagary is not more 
 strange than another." 
 
 He had been up all night. He had probably 
 had no sleep for about thirty hours. He had 
 assisted almost continuously, during that time, at 
 scenes of danger and emotion, and yet he was 
 master of himself and of his body. He did not 
 even yawn. He might have just strolled gently
 
 25 2 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 down Baysvvater Road to see me about a trifling 
 complaint, after a long night's rest and a leisurely 
 breakfast. Despite the frankness which he used 
 to those whom he treated as his equals in practical 
 philosophy, there was always a mystery behind the 
 glint of that man's spectacles. Such was his grim 
 power that for a few moments I did not truly realise 
 that Inez had been trying to commit suicide. I 
 knew the fact, but I did not realise it. The 
 realisation came gradually.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII 
 THE BEDSIDE 
 
 " MORRICE ! " 
 
 Mary came into the drawing-room with a new 
 burden in her voice. It was late in the afternoon. 
 The doctor had gone. A nurse had been sent for, 
 but had not yet arrived. Mary had reorganised the 
 life of the flat on a fresh basis, with Inez on her 
 bed as its principal centre, and me on the sheeted 
 sofa as a subsidiary centre. And already, under 
 Mary's wand, under her perfect confidence that she 
 was equal to the situation, the life of the flat was 
 running smoothly and regularly. No noise ! No 
 confusion ! No hysteria of servants ! Hysteria 
 could not exist near Mary. She had doffed the 
 apron — sign that order reigned. And yet now there 
 was apprehension in her voice. She looked at me 
 in silence, examining me, apparently undecided. 
 
 " How is she ? " I asked. 
 
 "She wants to see you," said Mary. "I don't 
 know what the doctor would say. I really don't. 
 Do you think you could get as far as the bedroom 
 
 253
 
 254 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 without doing yourself any harm ? You're very 
 weak." 
 
 " Oh yes," I said. " I must come. I feel quite 
 all right. I must come." 
 
 " She wanted to come to you. In fact I had 
 my work cut out to stop her. But you're certainly 
 better able to go to her than she is to come to you, 
 and as she wants to see you " 
 
 " Considering that I walked in here " 
 
 "No, you didn't." Mary corrected my pride 
 somewhat curtly. " You were practically carried in 
 here. Perhaps if I help you, and one of the 
 servants " 
 
 " I don't want the servants." 
 
 " No," she agreed. " But " 
 
 She would carefully weigh every project. She 
 would leave nothing to impulse when risks had to 
 be faced. 
 
 "You can't stop with her long, you know — it 
 wouldn't do for either of you," she said, as we passed 
 through the study. 
 
 The bedroom was arranged with minute neatness. 
 The first thing I noticed was that my bed had been 
 made, and the counterpane disposed in an unfamiliar 
 way. Mary must have made the bed herself. There 
 was a faint odour of eau de cologne. At the side 
 of the other bed was a table which had been carried 
 in out of the vestibule ; it had a white cloth and
 
 THE BEDSIDE 255 
 
 was covered with bottles, glasses, and some larger 
 vessels. Between the two beds a chair had been 
 placed for me. It appeared to me that I was afraid 
 to look at Inez. I distinguished her form on the 
 bed while my eye avoided her. I dropped into the 
 chair. Yes, I was weak. I could feel the tears 
 rising, and I sought to drive them back. 
 
 "Be sure to keep your dressing-gown well over 
 your knees," Mary whispered. And then she left 
 us, with silent tread. 
 
 Why should my eye have been timid to look at 
 Inez? I do not know. Throughout the afternoon 
 I had been thinking : " How she must have suffered 
 — to make her take the poison ! " And now that I 
 was by her side, the conception of what she had 
 suffered lacerated me almost intolerably. Of course 
 it was remorse that had driven Inez to suicide. I 
 could picture to myself her violent remorse, her 
 remorse holy in its intensity. I knew how she must 
 in her own mind have torn to pieces the arguments 
 with which she had defended herself to me, accusing 
 herself of my death, and judging her conduct in 
 the light of its accidental consequence, despising 
 logic in a paroxysm of contrition. I could picture 
 to myself her existence through the night and the 
 dawn. I knew that she had changed her dress, and 
 that she had despatched telegrams. She had pro- 
 bably kept an appearance of calm, probably convinced
 
 25 6 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 herself that she was calm. And then suddenly, with 
 no warning, she had yielded, and her remorse had 
 become a frenzy. And in an instant she had thought 
 of the oxalic acid. Was it just before she drank it 
 that she had prayed for my everlasting welfare ? It 
 must have been in some such supreme moment that 
 she had prayed. 
 
 When I looked at her the conception of what 
 she must have suffered overpowered me. ... It was 
 her presence. ... I was startled, shocked, to find 
 that I could not control myself. Tears ran down 
 my face, as I had seen tears running down the face 
 of children. A little more, and I should have 
 sobbed. 
 
 Her hair was loose over the pillow. Always 
 there was something strange to me about Inez, 
 and especially about her hair, when she lay in bed. 
 ... I don't know. ... A disclosure of the original 
 woman. ... I suppose it was the revelation of the 
 true forms and attitudes of her body, and the 
 revelation also of the depth of her physical life. 
 Inez lived in her body. . . . Do you understand 
 me ? . . . She thrilled in her body as some people 
 thrill in their souls. It was splendid. It was rare 
 and distinguished. And her loose hair on the pillow, 
 or perhaps the abandonment of an arm, was the 
 symbol of all this. I could feel it now. Her face 
 was bloated, the lips redder and more raw than
 
 THE BEDSIDE 257 
 
 ever ; it was drawn into a permanent and profound 
 apprehensiveness ; her breath came difficult and 
 irregular ; a hiccup shook her. Nevertheless I could 
 feel now all the fineness of what her physical life 
 had been ; it had all receded to her wide-spread hair, 
 and was therein visible. . . . But the change, the 
 havoc! Last night I had been the victim, the 
 ravaged remnant of a man, and she the perfectly- 
 functioning organism. Now, my blood was flowing 
 strongly, and she was the victim. While I was in 
 the drawing-room I had speculated, with remarkable 
 detachment, upon the wondrous and dire adventures 
 that were awaiting her if she should die. And I 
 did not much grieve, because I watched her through 
 them to the climax. Indeed I envied her, in that 
 she might precede me thither. That was in the 
 drawing-room. But as I sat by her bed, and 
 timorously looked at her corrupted and broken, I 
 could have cried out to her that if she would only 
 recover and forget, I would never ask of destiny 
 another favour. So terribly was my sense of justice 
 outraged by her martyrdom ! I wanted to pour my 
 strength into her, and by the magic of an intense 
 volition restore that skin to its pure brilliance, and 
 the contours of that face to their soft carelessness. 
 
 What could I say to her ? I could say nothing 
 except her name. 
 
 She raised her head anxiously, and looked in 
 
 s
 
 258 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 turn at the three doors of the bedroom, to see that 
 they were all closed. 
 
 " It wasn't all true," she said, in a whisper, when 
 she had satisfied herself about the doors, " what 
 I told you last night." 
 
 " Don't worry about that now," I said, trying to 
 make of my voice a reassuring caress. But my 
 voice was broken, and I averted my face to hide 
 my tears. 
 
 "But I must," she went on whispering. "It's 
 very important. It's very important for everybody 
 that you should know. I was only playing with 
 Johnnie, and he was only playing with me. . . . My 
 fault ! I drew him on. Yes, I drew him on. When 
 I say 'only playing' I mean it wasn't serious. It 
 wasn't honest. I might have been his mistress 
 to-day, but I didn't really care for him, nor him for 
 me. I pretended to myself I did ; but I didn't. . . . 
 Just wickedness, wickedness ! " 
 
 The sentences were interrupted by the hiccup, 
 and by her difficult breathing. She looked at me 
 fixedly, with a set, anxious face. One hand was 
 hanging limply over the edge of the bed. I could 
 divine that she wished to humiliate herself utterly ; 
 her nature compelled her to be spectacular. And 
 my wish was to put an end to her self-humiliation. 
 Then I thought: "But if this display satisfies her 
 instinct, what right have I to try to stop it ? She is
 
 THE BEDSIDE 259 
 
 perfectly sincere. She has her way of self-expression, 
 and I have mine." 
 
 " I hope you aren't going to worry about all that," 
 I answered. " What you said about me last night 
 was true enough, anyhow. It's all just as much my 
 fault as anybody's. Let's both forget it." 
 
 If I too could have humiliated myself deeply, if 
 we could have mingled in passionate abasement, each 
 snatching remorsefully at the whole of the blame, 
 she would have been more content. But this was 
 beyond me. 
 
 "It's very important in this way," she went on. 
 " He really is in love with Mary, though he doesn't 
 quite know it. He really is. And of course she is 
 with him. I was only interfering. . . . Jealous. I 
 stopped playing the piano last night because she 
 was too close to me. I could feel . . ." 
 
 "Yes, yes," I interrupted her. I could not help 
 myself. 
 
 "But you understand why I'm telling you all 
 this ? " she insisted. 
 
 " Yes," I said, more gently. But I did not care. 
 I was too tortured by sympathy for her to be 
 interested in information about other people. " Can 
 I get you anything?" The maintenance of life 
 seemed to be so difficult to her that one's first 
 thought was to press aid upon her. 
 
 " Now I want you to promise me something,
 
 2 6o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Morrice," she said, never raising her voice above a 
 whisper. 
 
 I made no response. 
 
 " Father Crowder is coming. He will give me 
 extreme unction. And I want you to be here, 
 Morrice." 
 
 I had a strong antipathy to priests of all kinds, 
 though I disliked Roman Catholic priests a little less 
 than others. No priest had ever entered my home. 
 It had not occurred to me that Inez, supposing 
 her to be desperately ill, would have need of her 
 Church. She seldom spoke to me of her religious 
 practices. I never knew when she went to con- 
 fession. Save for her punctiliousness concerning the 
 observation of Friday and of Lent, I might almost 
 have forgotten that she was a professed Roman 
 Catholic. I was now being reminded ! The idea of 
 assisting at a religious ceremony in my own home 
 revolted me. I should have to kneel ! . . . Could I 
 not excuse myself on the plea of my illness ? Surely 
 I was weak enough ! 
 
 " Certainly if you wish it," I said. Why should I 
 not gratify her by the sacrifice of some of my 
 intellectual pride? To kneel — was it so grave, to 
 kneel ? 
 
 " Thank you." 
 
 " But you'll be all right again in a week," I said. 
 " The doctor said he should pull you through. And
 
 THE BEDSIDE 261 
 
 he will." At the moment of saying this I truly 
 meant it. I could not think that Inez would die. 
 
 " Touch my hand," she said. 
 
 It was ice-cold. I put it under the bed-clothes. 
 I can still remember the feel of the fine lace at her 
 wrist. 
 
 " Have they told you what I did ? " she demanded 
 suddenly, in a different tone, having changed her 
 posture. 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 " I thought you were dead," she said. u I thought 
 I'd killed you." 
 
 " Inez ! " 
 
 " You must kiss me," she whispered. " Don't 
 hurt me — my lips." 
 
 She slightly raised her face. There was an 
 appeal in it, plaintive, simple, — I don't know ! I 
 sobbed. ... I thought I could write down every- 
 thing, but I can't . . .
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 THE CEREMONY 
 
 It seemed to me impossible that she was near death. 
 I could not imagine her dead. And yet that night, 
 in the bedroom, and in the flat generally, an atmo- 
 sphere presaging immediate death was created. The 
 weather was close, and doors and windows were left 
 open. We expected the priest. We listened for the 
 arrival of the priest. I lay in my study ; Mary had 
 caused a bed to be arranged for me there. Save the 
 resulting lassitude, I felt nothing of the violent attack 
 which had overthrown me on the previous evening ; 
 and the doctor had said that I had only to regain 
 my strength. I lay on a folding-bed, and watched 
 the window as I had watched it twenty hours earlier. 
 I could not yet envisage clearly and proportionately 
 either my adventure or my return therefrom to the 
 dailiness of existence in the flat. I mused on it 
 vaguely and intermittently. My reflections had no 
 distinct form and no particular tendency. Wonder : 
 that was my state. One of my faculties was 
 absorbed in listening for the advent of the priest. 
 
 262
 
 THE CEREMONY 263 
 
 Then I heard the front door open and shut, and I 
 heard a man's rich voice. Was that the voice of 
 the priest ? Was the priest in the flat ? And after 
 another minute the door between the study and 
 the bedroom was mysteriously closed. And then 
 Mary came into the study from the drawing-room, 
 and said : 
 
 " He has come." 
 
 " The priest ? " 
 
 " Yes. He is with her." 
 
 The priest was in the flat. We looked at each 
 other, Mary and I. I knew what was in her mind, 
 for the same thing was in my mind. Never should 
 we be able to eradicate from our mentality the 
 attitude towards the Roman Church — half hostile 
 and half awed — which a Protestant mother had 
 unwittingly formed in us. For some twenty years 
 we had been completely emancipated from the 
 external imposition upon us of any dogmatic ideas 
 concerning religion ; the Protestant mother had died 
 when Mary was twelve. We had an equal intellectual 
 disdain of all dogma. And yet a Roman Catholic 
 priest, and the rites over which he presided, escaped 
 somehow from our disdain. We despised our 
 mother's clergymen. But her horror of the astute- 
 ness of priests had had a result in us which she 
 did not foresee. There was something grandiosely 
 unnatural about a priest, something uniquely
 
 264 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 impressive. Even my revealing adventure could not 
 make me class a priest with other servants of 
 different gods. I remembered the solace of Inez' 
 prayer for the peace of my soul. There at any 
 rate the Church of Rome had triumphed in Inez. 
 When Mary said that the priest had come, it 
 seemed to me, and it seemed to her, as if the Pope 
 had come into my home, as if the whole Catholic 
 Church, its traditions, splendours, cruelties, and 
 sublime tenacities, had come into my home ; as 
 if the Middle Ages had entered in scarlet. The 
 nostrils of my imagination smelt incense. 
 
 Inez was being confessed, in her half-delirious 
 weakness. The priest was hearing matters that I 
 could never hear, judging with an authority that I 
 could never exert, consoling with a balm that I could 
 never offer ; I, her husband ; I, who knew more than 
 any priest had ever known ! I could tell Inez nothing 
 of what I knew ; the idea of attempting to tell her 
 had not even occurred to me. 
 
 Mary left me, nervously. I had not informed her 
 of Inez' request. Strange diffidence between brother 
 and sister ! I had been sitting up in bed. Without 
 too much difficulty I left the bed, and sat in my 
 easy-chair, wrapped from head to foot in a dressing- 
 gown. There I waited, uneasy, not knowing exactly 
 what would happen nor what would be the sequence 
 of events. What did happen was precisely the thing
 
 THE CEREMONY 265 
 
 that I had not anticipated. The little door giving 
 direct access to the bedroom opened, and the vest- 
 mented priest himself appeared and summoned me. 
 There was no greeting between us. He glanced at 
 me, seemed startled at my attire, hesitated, and then 
 beckoned, without a word. His gesture was dignified. 
 I obeyed. Evidently he was unaware that I was 
 supposed not to be able to walk without assistance. 
 I followed him, and softly closed the door. 
 
 I was surprised to see Marion in the bedroom. 
 She was busy at the dressing-table. All its usual 
 array had been removed from the dressing-table, 
 and a white napkin spread. On the napkin was a 
 silver vessel, of no household shape, and a crucifix. 
 My Regency candlesticks, and two others, had been 
 taken from their customary place, and garnished 
 with candles, which now burnt flickering at either 
 edge of the dressing-table. There was no other 
 illumination. Her spectacles prevented me from 
 seeing Marion's eyes, yet I knew at once, from 
 something intense and passionate in her posture, 
 that she was of my wife's religion. And I had not 
 known. Ii must have been she who had arranged 
 the candlesticks. She was in apron and cap and 
 starched wristbands, but she had ceased to be a 
 menial and had become a devotee. Whether or 
 not she had asked permission to remain in the 
 room, I felt that she was determined to remain ;
 
 266 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I felt that she had promised herself this ecstasy 
 and would not be denied. Upon seeing me, through 
 the glass of the dressing-table, she hurried towards 
 me, and led me to the large chair near the bed. 
 None spoke. Inez moaned slightly, moving amid 
 her hair on the bed, and gazing at the priest, rapt. 
 She was still troubled by the hiccup. The bed- 
 clothes had been disposed in a particular way. By 
 the dressing-table stood Marion, stiff and expectant, 
 as I always found her standing in the dining-room 
 when we went into dinner. I looked for her radiant 
 form ; I looked for the visible emission of her ecstasy 
 in a flight of thoughts, but I saw only Marion in 
 black and white. She knew not that I knew far 
 more of her than she knew herself, and that her 
 most secret emotions had not been hidden from me. 
 She knew not that she had been a miracle to me. 
 
 The priest, having been to the dressing-table, 
 approached the bed, and half knelt. And at the 
 same moment Marion knelt, with the practised 
 facility of one accustomed to genuflexions. And 
 the robe of the priest and his profile stood out 
 between the light of the candles and the whiteness 
 of the sheet, and his shadow fell across the disfigured 
 face of Inez, which she turned towards him. She 
 shut her eyes, and with his thumb he anointed 
 them in a crosswise motion, saying in a low, sad 
 voice :
 
 THE CEREMONY 267 
 
 " Through this holy unction, and His most tender 
 mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatsoever sins 
 thou hast committed by seeing. . . . Amen ! " 
 
 He was a stoutish man of about fifty, with an 
 aristocratic but intelligent face, and fine nostrils ; 
 his hand was ringed, and it moved with grace- 
 fulness, — a self-conscious hand. It was difficult not 
 to believe that he was as convinced as the women 
 were of the efficacy of his acts and words. 
 
 Then he crossed Inez* ears with that shapely 
 thumb, and murmured : 
 
 "Through this holy unction, and His most tender 
 mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatsoever sins 
 thou hast committed by hearing. . . . Amen ! " 
 
 And thus with her nose and her mouth ; till he 
 came to her hands, and then to her feet. That the 
 symbolism of forgiveness should be extended to 
 the feet surprised and impressed me. I remember 
 the pale, exposed feet of Inez, like the feet of a 
 martyr. . . . 
 
 Then the priest took the cross, as one might take 
 a fragile jewel, and offered it to the pardoned lips 
 of Inez, who kissed it with a rapturous fervour, and 
 sighed content. In her life this moment was the 
 culmination of the spectacular. I could feel in my 
 heart the supremacy of its effect on her. . . . 
 
 Later, Marion rose from her knees. The priest, 
 reserved and taciturn, but with an unexceptionable
 
 268 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 dignified correctness, made his preparations for 
 departure, and departed. Marion turned on the 
 electric light, and, extinguishing the candles, put 
 them away ; then she rearranged the bed, and 
 restored the customary array to the dressing-table ; 
 lastly, she folded up the white napkin. After a 
 short interval, Mary and the newly arrived nurse 
 came into the bedroom. Mary hovered round the 
 bed, sympathising with Inez' sufferings, and mur- 
 muring remarks to the prim nurse. She made no 
 allusion to the ceremony which had just concluded, 
 nor was it ever mentioned between us. 
 
 " Now, Morrice ! " she said to me warningly. 
 
 With her help I retired. Inez was still being 
 shaken by the hiccup. 
 
 The doctor had considered that during the day 
 her case had become desperate. He did not expect 
 her to pass the night. It was not, however, till the 
 fifth day that, after a prolonged period of weakness 
 resembling coma, she expired.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 DISTURBANCE 
 
 SHE expired in the forenoon. It was Wednesday. 
 I sat afterwards in the study, dressed, near my 
 temporary bed. I had been enfeebled on the Sunday, 
 the day following the visit of the priest, but thence 
 onwards I had made rapid progress, being con- 
 stitutionally a man of very short convalescences. 
 As I sat in the study, alone, I did not think of her 
 as dead. I had requested Mary to have the deserted 
 body completely covered with a sheet as soon as the 
 nurse had made it ready for the shroud. I wished 
 that Inez should not be distressed by the obscene 
 sight of that which she had left, nor by the spectacle 
 of her friends wasting upon it their lamentations. 
 I also requested that silence and repose should be 
 maintained in the flat. I chose the study for my 
 solitude because the study had been the scene of my 
 first experiences during the night of my adventure. 
 It was in the study that the gross world had dissolved 
 for me. As I sat in my armchair I could gaze at a 
 certain red vase, remembering the moment when 
 
 269
 
 2 7 o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 that vase, sole relic of the gross world, had jutted up 
 alone in a sea of multi-coloured radiance. As I sat 
 in my armchair I was in the exact spot where the 
 radiant form of Marion had reclined while emitting 
 the chromatic shapes of thought, the spot which it 
 had quitted on an amorous errand while Marion 
 dreamed, the spot to which it had been recalled so 
 brusquely by the jar of the open window in the 
 night breeze. The study was, as it were, sacred to 
 me, set apart from the other rooms of the flat. It 
 was in the study that I had gone through the 
 experience of being cast out from humanity. 
 
 Inez might be there. Assuredly she was some- 
 where near. When they came to tell me that she 
 had passed away I went for a moment to her body, 
 and after being satisfied that she had indeed passed 
 away, I glanced about and behind me, as though I 
 might discover her watching us. But I had not 
 remained. In the study, gazing at the vase, or at 
 the window where I had been captive, I was not 
 afraid. I had nothing whatever of the common fear 
 of the disembodied. But I was full of curiosity, 
 anxiety, and solicitude. And I was self-conscious. 
 She might be — she probably was — looking at me from 
 some corner, appealing to me in vain for assistance 
 and sympathy. She was criticising and judging me. 
 She was being astounded at my blindness in not per- 
 ceiving her. She was thrilled with a supreme alarm.
 
 DISTURBANCE 271 
 
 I was not aware of any personal grief. I did not 
 think of her as dead. How should I think of her as 
 dead when I could almost feel her glance upon me ? 
 But I was grieved for her. The acuteness of my 
 sympathy was painful to me. I wished fervently to 
 be able to reassure her amid the awful disturbance of 
 her new sensations. Never in the gross world had 
 she stood in such need of sympathy. I strained my 
 eyes to see her. I thought that perhaps by virtue of 
 intensity of volition I might, having regard to my 
 knowledge, glimpse her, were it faintly, were it for an 
 instant. But no ! Then I recalled the mysterious 
 gaseous counterpart which I had seen floating above 
 my own bed on the night of my adventure. I did 
 not want to return to the bedroom, but I did 
 return to the bedroom, tip-toeing in my slippers. I 
 approached her bed and explored the spaces above 
 it for a trace of a pale form. But I could detect 
 nothing. We in the gross envelope were cut off 
 from such apparitions. 
 
 Like a thief fleeing I went back to the study and 
 sat down again in the armchair. Not a sound in 
 the flat ! There was no sun on this window, which 
 faced the west, but I could see the sunshine playing 
 on the restless elm-trees. She had died in the day- 
 time. Would that affect her ? She had brought 
 about her own departure, by a wilful act. Would 
 that affect her? I had fancied that I knew
 
 272 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 everything about the state in which she was. But how 
 little I knew! Now, surely, the radiant world was 
 breaking in for her upon the gross. Now surely the 
 solid was melting for her, and two universes were 
 merged in dire confusion. And, if she was looking 
 at me, what she saw was not a man of flesh and 
 blood, clothed, wearing slippers, but a radiant form 
 pulsating in a sea of radiance. I had so seen 
 Marion, and so Inez would see me. Marion, obsessed 
 by a secret passion, had not concerned herself with 
 me. Though I had but just departed, though the 
 flat was full of the stir of my departure, in her heart 
 she had been busy with nothing but her love. The 
 shapes of her thought had not once been directed 
 upon me as she sat waking or dreaming in the arm- 
 chair. She had done naught for my solitude. 
 
 I set myself to think of Inez, to think of her in 
 steady sympathy. I emphasised my ardent wishes 
 for her safe passage across the difficult frontiers of 
 this gross world. I pictured strongly her radiance, 
 and my own, whipping my imagination to its full 
 power, and strove to shed upon her a constant 
 stream of shapes that should convince her of my 
 understanding sympathy, and cheer her forward. 
 I came nigh to seeing her and the procession of 
 my thoughts from me to her. The whole force of 
 my being was concentrated in this effort to be 
 of service to her.
 
 DISTURBANCE 273 
 
 The distant sound of the telephone-bell cut 
 through my mood like a shaft. I fought against it, 
 withdrawing more and more within myself so as to 
 think powerfully. But after a time the door of the 
 study opened from the drawing-room, and Mary 
 entered, and shattered my mood to pieces. She 
 had scarcely left us for five days. She was calm 
 but tearful. 
 
 " Morrice," she said, " I've just telephoned to 
 the doctor. He says he'll come along at once. I 
 asked him about the inquest, and he says that he'll 
 do what's necessary." 
 
 The inquest ! I was forgetting that Inez had 
 committed suicide. It was so long since the act 
 itself that her death seemed to be the result of a 
 natural illness. An inquest — on the body ! The 
 body ! I was being dragged back to that offensive 
 and utterly unimportant remnant. I saw the inquest 
 and the funeral as an endless vista of desolation 
 cutting me off from Inez herself. 
 
 "There are several things to be done," said 
 Mary. 
 
 " What ? " 
 
 "Well," she said. "Several. Letters to be 
 
 written, and But if you'll leave everything to 
 
 me, I'll be responsible. You're certainly not fit to 
 put yourself about." 
 
 " Oh yes, I am." 
 
 T
 
 274 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " Well," she replied caustically. " We shall see 
 what the doctor says about that." 
 
 " What about Harold ? " I asked. 
 
 Harold was Inez' sole surviving brother, almost 
 her one relative. Mary had written to him on the 
 Saturday, but he had left his home on Monday 
 morning before the first postal delivery, and nothing 
 had been heard from him. He was a commercial 
 traveller, and apparently the letter had been following 
 him on a journey in the north. 
 
 " I really don't know what to do," said Mary, 
 "unless I take a cab and go down to his place of 
 business and find out something definite. It's very 
 annoying." 
 
 " No news of Johnnie yet, I suppose ? " 
 
 She flushed slightly, as always at the mention 
 of Hulse's name. She had telephoned to him several 
 times during the illness, but he had strangely gone 
 to Paris and left no address. Hulse was heavily on 
 my mind. One day Hulse and I would have to 
 meet. 
 
 " No ! Nothing ! I can telephone again to ask 
 if he's returned, if you like." 
 
 " Oh ! " I said. " Do exactly as you think best." 
 
 "Then I'm to see to everything? ... I can 
 always ask you if I want to know anything." 
 
 I nodded. I ought to have felt very grateful to 
 her. To help me she was entirely neglecting her
 
 DISTURBANCE 275 
 
 child, who was far more important to her than a 
 brother. But I did not feel grateful. I did not 
 feel anything except that I must be alone and in 
 tranquillity to think of Inez. 
 
 Mary closed the door. Invaluable woman ! 
 Priceless in an emergency ! Absolutely reliable, 
 absolutely capable ! And genuinely sympathetic in 
 her calm, dry way. . . . Tears in her eyes for Inez 
 and for me ! But where did she suppose Inez was ? 
 
 I tried eagerly to repair the breach of the inter- 
 ruption. But in a few moments the door opened 
 again and Mary reappeared, shut the door, and 
 advanced into the room. 
 
 " He's come — her brother ! " she said in a low 
 voice. " Of course you'll have to see him." 
 
 She spoke thus of him as a stranger, because he 
 was effectively a stranger to us. Mary herself, indeed, 
 had never before set eyes on him. He was a man of 
 about forty-five, a widower, with no interest in any 
 art, and nothing whatever in common with either 
 Inez or myself. I doubt if Inez and he had met 
 on the average oftener than once a year since our 
 marriage. I had seen him altogether perhaps half a 
 dozen times. He had made no impression upon me 
 at all. A silent being — silent because without ideas, 
 without personality. A man seemingly bereft of ambi- 
 tion, and whose sole desire was to be left in peace in 
 the groove which habit had formed. A solitary !
 
 276 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 He had the solitude of the commercial traveller from 
 Monday to Friday, and the solitude of the unsociable 
 childless widower in a small suburban house on 
 Saturday and Sunday. 
 
 " Have you told him ? " I asked Mary. 
 
 " Yes. I told him everything as quickly as I 
 could," said she. 
 
 "It won't do for me to keep him waiting," I 
 murmured. 
 
 " No," said Mary. " But of course he understands 
 you're an invalid." 
 
 I rose and went into the drawing-room, where 
 Mary left me with him. He wrung my hand 
 hysterically. I asked him to sit down. He was 
 nearly as tall as myself, but thin, with a thin face, 
 greyish hair, and shining eyes. He sat down and 
 then burst into tears, sobbing loudly. I could say 
 nothing. Then, between his sobs, he began to tell 
 me how, owing to an error of his housekeeper, 
 Mary's warning letter had not reached him till the 
 previous evening. He did not precisely blame us 
 for not having made further efforts to communicate 
 with him, but I could see the trend of his idea. I 
 reminded him that I had been ill, and he cried : 
 " Oh ! I know ! I know it couldn't be helped." 
 
 Then there was a silence between us. 
 
 " I'd have given anything to see her again before 
 she died," he exclaimed.
 
 DISTURBANCE 277 
 
 "She was practically unconscious for several 
 days," I said. 
 
 "Anything!" he repeated, not heeding me. 
 
 " It's a most astounding story ! " he said, wiping 
 his eyes — not furtively, but boldly, as though it was 
 customary for a man to weep and sob in grief. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The astoundingncss of the episode had shaken 
 him violently out of his groove. The event had 
 invested him with a certain importance in his own 
 estimation. He was the only relative of this beautiful 
 woman who at the age of little over thirty had taken 
 poison under the misapprehension that her husband 
 was dead. 
 
 " There never was such a thing heard of in our 
 family before," he said. 
 
 His sense of the family was aroused. He repre- 
 sented the family ; he was the family ; and the 
 family somehow owned Inez. I was merely a person 
 who had temporarily taken Inez away from her 
 family. 
 
 " Morrice ! " he said. " I should like to see her." 
 
 He employed my Christian name awkwardly, as 
 one not accustomed to use it, and scarcely even con- 
 vinced of his right to use it. He was afraid of me, 
 chiefly, I think, because he occasionally saw my 
 name in newspapers. 
 
 I led him to the bedroom. I could not depute
 
 278 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 this office to another. He imposed upon me his own 
 standard and code of propriety. We stood together 
 staring at the sheet beneath which the form of Inez's 
 body was vaguely discernible. He drew the sheet 
 partly away and gazed at the face, and sobbed 
 painfully. 
 
 " Poor girl ! " he muttered. " We were the last of 
 our family ; and now I'm alone ! If anybody had 
 told me that one of our family would ever commit 
 suicide ! Where did she do it, Morrice ? " 
 
 He continued to gaze in affliction at the dis- 
 figured face as though he were gazing at Inez herself. 
 I had to show him the bathroom, and the large closet 
 between the bathroom and the bedroom from a shelf 
 in which Inez had taken the bottle of oxalic acid. 
 I had to reconstitute the scene for him as well as 
 I could. He was avid of details. 
 
 He burst out suddenly, his hysteric eyes glinting : 
 
 " How can you be sure it wasn't a mistake ? " 
 
 "A mistake?" ' 
 
 " Yes. How can you be sure she didn't mistake 
 the oxalic acid for something else ? " 
 
 He clung to this notion, arguing for it with a 
 certain ingenuity. There was a bottle of laudanum 
 on the shelf, and an old travelling flask containing a 
 few drops of brandy. She would of course be in a 
 state of extreme agitation, perhaps almost beside 
 herself. Supposing she had meant only to swallow
 
 DISTURBANCE 279 
 
 a few drops of laudanum to help her to sleep, for 
 instance ! And there was the brandy, too ! Had 
 she definitely told me or Mary or the doctor that 
 she had intended suicide ? No, she had not. It 
 was merely understood. . . . He examined every- 
 thing minutely, then returned to the corpse, wept 
 again, and covered it up. Mary came in, to extricate 
 me, and he recommenced his argument, passionately. 
 
 He stayed for tea, drinking a lot of tea but eating 
 nothing. It was during tea that he heard about the 
 visit of the priest. Evidently he regretted Inez' 
 Catholicism, but he had forgotten it. The priest 
 would know whether Inez had meant to kill herself. 
 He would go and see the priest. Neither Mary nor 
 I knew where the priest lived. But Marion knew ; 
 Marion had already, it appeared, shown curiosity as 
 to the funeral service. Harold departed. His last 
 words were : " It's a very strange thing to me, any 
 member of our family committing suicide ! " 
 
 Then came the doctor, and instantly after him 
 the coroner's officer, with whom he had already been 
 in communication, — a policeman. A policeman in 
 my home ! I had to see him. It was always a 
 question of the corpse, the corpse. Nothing but 
 the corpse ! I learnt that by a fortunate chance 
 the inquest could take place on the morrow. The 
 corpse would have to be removed to the mortuary. 
 At night ! These things were generally done after
 
 2 8o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 dark. People preferred it. Neighbours preferred 
 it. . . . Endless, endless discussions, plannings! 
 When the policeman, helmet in hand, had gone, and 
 the doctor was going, I called the doctor aside, 
 away from Mary. An unreasonable thought had 
 flicked in my brain. 
 
 " You are sure she is dead ? " I asked him. 
 " Because " 
 
 " Quite," he replied, and looked at me. 
 
 He understood. 
 
 More men arrived. They were in and out con- 
 stantly ; men accustomed to death. A coffin ! And 
 when darkness had fallen the coffin went down again. 
 We saw no more of Harold that evening. 
 
 Mary went home for the night. I was alone. 
 Where was Inez, then ? I endeavoured to resume 
 command of my faculties, but I could not. In spite 
 of Mary's efforts to shield me from the situation, 
 the corpse had dispossessed Inez in my mind and 
 would not be ousted. I slept, and could not even 
 dream of Inez.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 TO THE GRAVE 
 
 I WENT to the inquest. The doctor would have 
 signed a certificate that I was not in a fit condition 
 to go — he advised me not to go — but I went. I 
 felt that I was bound to go ; it was a morbid desire 
 in me. As I passed out through the hall of the 
 Mansions into the Square I realised that the Mansions 
 and the Square were agog about me, that I was a 
 figure of attraction. I was the man upon whose 
 eyes the coins had been put and who had come 
 to life again only to find that his wife had killed 
 herself from grief. It was a high sensation for the 
 Mansions. The demeanour of the janitor in the 
 porch was quite changed ; superciliousness no longer 
 showed through the thin mask of the obsequious. 
 He summoned a taxi-cab with enthusiasm, and 
 seemed to wish to lift me into it. And as the driver 
 of the taxi-cab stared at my black, and stared still 
 harder when I gave him the address, I thought that 
 he too divined how sensational I was. 
 
 The shapeless and shabby room — in some 
 
 281
 
 282 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 impossible street — which served as coroner's court, 
 was crowded and stinking. My policeman was there, 
 bare-headed, officious, and busy whispering out his 
 authority beneath the cold, clear remarks of the 
 coroner to the jury. The coroner sat on a plain 
 chair at a plain table, — a man, obviously, in whom 
 conscientiousness strove successfully against a dis- 
 like of being habitually overworked. You could see 
 and hear at once that he lived always in haste, yet 
 would leave nothing undone that ought to be done. 
 The jury, every one in an attitude of self-conscious- 
 ness, blinked in a pew. There were thirteen of 
 them, apparently more or less prospering dealers in 
 small quantities of small commodities. An honest 
 lot ! I overheard that they had viewed the bodies. I 
 wondered why just they should have been chosen 
 by destiny to stare at the discarded envelope of 
 Inez. I wondered why the discarded envelope of Inez 
 should have been delivered over to their inquisitive 
 and indifferent eyes. I thought how afflictingly 
 cumbrous was the machinery by which society pro- 
 tects itself. I tried to think of Inez, to despatch 
 to her some message ; but I could not, in that 
 assemblage intent upon corpses ; the mortuary — 
 the museum of corpses — was next door. All the 
 faces of the witnesses and the huddled spectators 
 were under the sinister enchantment. The re- 
 porters, idle for the moment and openly bored
 
 TO THE GRAVE 283 
 
 by the remarks of the coroner, alone were exempt 
 from it. 
 
 I found myself wedged in a group of gloomy 
 women who seemed to be blind to the advantages 
 of personal cleanliness, or who had tried to achieve 
 it and failed. I remembered that if Inez were there 
 she would see us all radiant, and that my punctilious 
 frock coat would be no more to her than the foul 
 shawls of these women. But I could not realise it ; 
 I could not. The obsession of flesh— and decaying 
 flesh — had been put upon me, and would not be 
 shaken off. 
 
 A neatly dressed lady in spectacles motioned to 
 me. It was Marion, apart for once from her apron 
 and cap. I had not recognised her. She was with 
 the cook. The coroner's officer had intimated that 
 it would be well for both of them to attend. Marion 
 wished to draw my attention to Harold, who was 
 gesticulating to me from the back of the court. We 
 had not seen Harold since the previous afternoon. 
 I made my way to him, and he began to explain 
 how he had arrived at the Mansions immediately 
 after I had left. He was in a state of considerable 
 agitation. The coroner's officer called out ' Silence.' 
 ' I must speak to you,' said Harold. Wc went into 
 the street. It was the priest that was on his mind. 
 He had had great difficulty in seeing the priest, had 
 not indeed seen him until that morning. The priest
 
 284 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 had declined to tell him anything that Inez had 
 said in confession, and was not to be moved by the 
 argument that Harold was the head of Inez' family. 
 Harold was outraged, to the point of regarding the 
 whole organisation of Catholicism in England as a 
 conspiracy against English family life. He asked 
 why the priest had not been subpoenaed to the 
 inquest, and kept repeating that the priest ought 
 to be compelled to speak, and referring to the 
 power of the law. In his deep mourning he was 
 an incarnate protest against the invasion of his 
 family by Catholicism. Then the doctor appeared 
 along the pavement, and with his help I managed 
 to convince my brother-in-law that the theory of an 
 accident was perfectly untenable ; at any rate Harold 
 affected conviction. I could see that he was secretly 
 accusing me of disloyalty to the memory of Inez in 
 opposing the theory of an accident. I could read 
 in his face his belief that he alone really cherished 
 the memory of Inez. - 
 
 We were summoned by an excited voice into 
 the court. Already our case had been reached. 
 The coroner appeared to be entirely familiar with 
 it. His tone had somewhat changed. The un- 
 usualness of the circumstances had produced its 
 effect even on him. In vain he sought to maintain 
 his air of detachment and use. Moreover he dis- 
 closed that he was familiar with my name; he
 
 TO THE GRAVE 285 
 
 uttered my name and calling with an emphasis of 
 respect. The doctor gave his evidence ; the cook 
 gave hers ; Marion was not asked to testify ; I gave 
 my evidence. The reporters were as busy as they 
 could be. The jury and the spectators were gapingly 
 intent, and sorry when the evidence proved to be 
 so short. With all its unusualness, the case was 
 extraordinarily simple. The coroner began his 
 address to the jury with an expression of sympathy 
 with the husband. And then Harold jumped up with 
 
 a hysterical, " Mr. Coroner, I beg to demand " 
 
 And instantly the court thrilled. " Who are you ? " 
 the coroner asked, suavely, noticing, with his flair, 
 the man's condition. " I am the sole remaining 
 representative of the deceased's family." The acci- 
 dent theory was poured out, pell-mell, at white heat, 
 and the priest did not escape. At first I was shocked, 
 and angry. But the poor fellow could not help the 
 explosion. No argument could convince his emotion. 
 The unique event of his silent and monotonous 
 existence had occurred, arousing swiftly his dormant 
 passion for the repute of his family. An ideal blazed 
 within him. In his brief madness he was heroic. 
 Impossible not to respect his fervour! He would 
 fain reduce the grandiose and fatal act of Inez to 
 the level of a paltry mishap. He lacked imagina- 
 tion ! . . . And yet had he not imagination, narrow 
 but intense?
 
 286 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 The sardonic curl of the doctor's lip, during 
 Harold's painful rhapsody, was surpassingly cruel. 
 
 The coroner summed up Harold infallibly and 
 immediately. He soothed him, with firm tact, flatter- 
 ing him slightly by a few questions, and then turned 
 again to the jury. In five minutes the verdict was 
 given. I wanted to fly. But the coroner's officer 
 had me in his grasp. The doctor went ; the servants 
 went ; two reporters went ; half the spectators went ; 
 I, listening to other cases, had to remain for the 
 fulfilment of formalities, and Harold stayed with 
 me. At last, I received the paper which authorised 
 me to bury out of sight that which Inez had 
 abandoned. I left the mean and undignified court 
 and the overworked coroner, and breathed the fine 
 air of the street. I thought with relief that all was 
 over then. But Harold, sticking to my side, began 
 to discuss the funeral. He was intensely interested 
 in the details of the funeral. I asked him to come 
 home with me in my cab ; I could do no less. 
 Before we reached the Mansions we saw the placard 
 of a evening paper : " West End Suicide. Strange 
 Story. Scene at inquest." And in the Square itself 
 we saw another placard : " Inquest on a well-known 
 lady in the West End." Astounding, that I should 
 feel momentarily flattered because Inez, being my 
 wife, was therefore ' well-known.' Yet I did. Harold, 
 while inveighing against the prying sensationalism
 
 TO THE GRAVE 287 
 
 of the press, was secretly delighted by all this 
 publicity. 
 
 The priest was in the hall of the Mansions, 
 waiting to ascend in the lift. The encounter between 
 him and Harold was extremely distressing for me ; 
 not because it was violent — the priest had an ample 
 fund of diplomacy — but because I felt responsible 
 for Harold's behaviour. I could not disown him 
 as a brother-in-law. The priest had come to see 
 me ; but the hazard which caused him to see Harold 
 in seeing me was positively malign. The presence 
 of the lift-boy imposed silence in the lift. At my 
 door, Marion, aproned and capped as though she 
 had never left the flat, received us with ceremony. 
 I took the visitors to my study. The priest said 
 that he wished to see me alone. Harold objected 
 that, as the priest's visit could have only one purpose, 
 he had a right to be present at the interview. I was 
 obliged to support the man. The priest had come 
 to enquire as to the funeral ; he assumed naturally 
 that I should bury my wife according to the ordi- 
 nances of her religion. Harold resented the inter- 
 ment of a member of his family with Roman rites. 
 I could not tell either of them that I did not expect 
 to bury Inez. I could not tell them that they might 
 bury the residue which she had quitted how they 
 chose, for aught I cared. I wondered if she was 
 still in the study, watching our radiant forms.
 
 288 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Mary entered. She had heard some uproar of 
 voices and meant to intervene for my bodily health. 
 She candidly detested Harold. She could not discern 
 the idealist in him. She said that as Inez had died 
 a Roman Catholic, as a Roman Catholic she ought 
 to be buried, unless I preferred a purely civil funeral. 
 It would have been difficult to decide whether 
 Harold or the priest was the more finely lashed by 
 her tone. I told the priest that he might preside 
 at the funeral. Harold was thunderstruck. He 
 departed, pale with shame and ire, and saying loudly 
 that he should not attend the funeral. When he 
 was gone the priest suitably regretted the incident. 
 But in the evening Harold returned, repentant, 
 ready to abase himself in order to gain some share 
 in the direction of the funeral. It was an emotional 
 experience of which his soul refused to be deprived. 
 His instinct was towards magnificence in the funeral. 
 We did not quarrel, but we spent together an 
 evening and a day of deplorable tedium for me. 
 He fought for his ideal inch by inch, and the 
 ultimate treaty was not entirely unfavourable to his 
 valour. In the execution of it he was unimaginably 
 active and urgent. I laughed to myself. Yet I 
 sympathised with him. The tension of his life in 
 those brief days must have been terrible, an awful 
 and dangerous pleasure to him. He and I went 
 alone to the funeral. At the chapel of the cemetery
 
 TO THE GRAVE 289 
 
 the priest met us, all blowing in the July breeze. 
 More formalities ! But by the mere efflux of time, 
 it seemed, the coffin lowered itself into the hole in 
 the ground. And Harold gave a last look at Inez. 
 It was Inez herself that Harold had seen nailed up 
 in the coffin. . . . His adieu to the priest was a 
 masterpiece of icy fire. 
 
 " Good-bye for the present," I said to him at the 
 gates, and hailed a cab. 
 
 " But aren't we going back in the coach ? " he 
 murmured, aghast. 
 
 I answered as gently as I could : 
 
 " No, my dear fellow." 
 
 Later in the afternoon an emissary of the funeral- 
 furnishers came to the flat to enquire if everything 
 had been done to my satisfaction. The incident of 
 the cab had apparently caused disquiet. 
 
 " I suppose you haven't got the account with 
 you ? " I asked him. 
 
 But he had, by a fortunate chance. 
 
 I wrote a cheque and paid him, and myself 
 conducted him to the door. 
 
 The incubus, the dead weight, of that which 
 Inez had abandoned rolled off me. I was free to 
 think of her. I was happy, by myself in my study, 
 after Mary had gone home to her child. 
 
 U
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 MARION 
 
 At breakfast, I had the newspapers, a couple of 
 second-hand catalogues of books, and a few letters of 
 condolence. (Not a word nor sign yet from John 
 Hulse.) I read the letters, noting with detachment 
 the difficulty of writing a letter of condolence well, 
 and the rareness of success in this task. I did not 
 open the book-catalogues. I glanced at a newspaper, 
 page by page, and the effect was just as if it had 
 been printed in one of those foreign languages which 
 once I had learnt so easily but of which now I had 
 no knowledge. Nothing in it made an impression 
 on me, not even a title. My mind was away, 
 wandering at its pleasure, heedless of control. 
 
 Could my friends have seen me there, sitting 
 alone at breakfast in a room that was not a bachelor's 
 room, with a square yard of empty white table-cloth 
 stretching beyond the rampart of breakfast things, 
 on the morning after my wife's funeral, they would 
 have pitied me for a pathetic figure worthy of com- 
 passion. Yet I was not unhappy. I may have been 
 
 290
 
 MARION 291 
 
 pensive, but I was not unhappy. Indeed I was 
 conscious of a certain grave happiness. My solitude 
 did not render me disconsolate. I was no longer 
 prostrated by the shattering of the amorous enter- 
 prise which had possessed me when Inez avowed her 
 relations with John Hulse. I had no sensation what- 
 ever of despair. And on the surfaces of my mind 
 I had many pleasurable sensations. The splendid 
 weather pleased me. The beauty and order and 
 silence of the room pleased me. The geometrically 
 regular creases in the damask table-cloth pleased 
 me. The food pleased me. I was gladdened by 
 the sure increase of strength in my body, the return 
 of physical power. That body had once seemed 
 horribly gross, heavy, and unresponsive to me. 
 But, though I regretted lost freedoms, I did not 
 feel imprisoned in my body. And I wondered, not 
 at its incapacity, but at its power and skill. 
 
 I did not mourn for Inez. The death of Inez 
 caused me no sorrow, neither joy. The drama of her 
 life, and the swift circumstances of her departure, 
 seemed to me to be fine. All our, lives had been 
 wrong with a. fundamental and inclusive blindness. 
 But hers, viewed complete, had the harmonious con- 
 tours and the homogeneity of a work of art. It had 
 been splendid in its blindness, in the violence of its 
 intensity throughout, in its abandonment to instinct. 
 Her secret revolt during the years of genteel poverty
 
 292 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 had a quality of continuous hidden violence that was 
 heroic for me. She had lived for the fallacy of desire, 
 but she had lived. And her death was of a piece 
 with her life. All the desolating tedium of her 
 inquest and funeral rounded off the tale. I saw that 
 tedium now as torture, but as exquisite torture. I 
 gave myself to it again, in retrospect, as to a sweet 
 pain. And how could it have been rendered less 
 tedious? It could not have been rendered less 
 tedious. The appalling and exasperating weariness 
 of those formalities was inherent in the ideals of the 
 very race itself. And now they were finished ; they 
 were over. That which Inez had quitted was defi- 
 nitely bestowed. I sympathised with, I deeply 
 understood, every person with whom those formalities 
 had forced me into contact. . . . Three days, and by 
 chafing I had lengthened three days into a century ! 
 Had I to live them again I would yield myself 
 to them utterly as to the water of a tide ; I 
 would live in them minute by minute, with divine 
 indifference. 
 
 If I had an inquietude, it was not caused by Inez' 
 death, but by my tingling consciousness of the fact 
 that she was alive. Where was she now? Into 
 what errors was her radiant tissue of desire leading 
 her? What false paradise was she beginning to 
 construct ? Absurdly, I felt that if, with my expe- 
 rience, I could only speak to her for an instant, I
 
 MARION 293 
 
 might save her from ages of futile illusion ! All I 
 could do was to think of her, to think towards her. 
 This I did, returning constantly to the exercise with 
 joy, and picturing in my fancy the thoughts flying to 
 her, invisible to my gross vision, but substantial to 
 hers ! Warning, succouring thoughts that streamed 
 to her ! The convinced sense of this seeming-mira- 
 culous one-sided communication made me happy. 
 Happiness must have been apparent in my eyes. 
 
 So that when Marion came into the room I 
 tried to modify my expression, from a wish not to 
 wound or puzzle her. It was as if I had been 
 ashamed of my feelings. I stared at the paper, 
 frowning. I had not rung for Marion. It appeared 
 that she had entered in order to satisfy herself that 
 I was not incapable of putting food into my mouth 
 or of demanding anything that I might happen to 
 need. She went behind me to the sideboard. 
 
 " Shall I get your cigarettes, sir ? " 
 
 "No, thanks," I said. "You can clear the 
 table." 
 
 I rose and glanced out of the window. 
 
 When she had removed from the cloth everything 
 but my letters and papers, she suddenly stopped in 
 her work and turned her spectacles upon me. 
 
 " May I speak to you, sir ? " She coughed. 
 
 " Certainly," I said. " What is it ? " Her deference 
 embarrassed me.
 
 294 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " I only wanted to know if you could tell me 
 whether you thought of keeping on your present 
 establishment or not, sir . . . now ! I don't like 
 troubling you, but I thought you might be making 
 your arrangements. I've had an offer of a very good 
 situation at Oxford, and I thought if you were think- 
 ing of giving me notice soon If you understand 
 
 me, sir . . . Sorry as I am to intrude." 
 
 "You must do exactly what you think best for 
 yourself, Marion," I said cordially. I avoided the 
 tone of a master to a servant, and spoke with easy 
 good-humour, partly natural and partly affected. 
 
 " It isn't that I wish to leave here, sir. Not at 
 all ! " she replied in her trained voice of servility, 
 apparently not perceiving my advance towards fellow- 
 ship, or ignoring it. " But I was thinking it would 
 be a pity to refuse this place at Oxford if " 
 
 " I don't want to change anything here," I 
 said. 
 
 " Thank you, sir. May I tell cook the same ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 There was no sign of satisfaction nor of dissatis- 
 faction in her face or gestures. She proceeded with 
 her operations. 1 sat down near the window. 
 
 " I suppose you know what a woman like you 
 ought to do ? " I ventured. 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " You ought to get married. Instead of remain-
 
 MARION 295 
 
 ing a parlourmaid." I adopted a curt geniality. It 
 was a clumsy effort to break down the barrier 
 separating us, but it was an effort. 
 
 " I'm not one to marry, sir," she replied. 
 
 On the surface she was inflexible in her servility. 
 But I had stirred something profound in her that 
 she could not control. She flushed. Her voice 
 shook in the fervour of its sincerity. I felt that I 
 ought to apologise to her. I felt that I ought to ask 
 this woman to sit down while I apologised, and that 
 at least I ought to rise. I guessed now what had 
 happened within the last few days. The object of 
 her desire must have promised himself to the other 
 woman who more purely desired him. The odd- 
 job-man, declining a parlourmaid, had betrothed 
 himself to a prison-wardress. Fate had gone against 
 Marion. A tragedy had enacted behind those 
 spectacles, and her romance was over. She had 
 loved beneath her, and had lost. That was why she 
 was ready to leave London, why she was perhaps 
 anxious to leave the Mansions. I understood now 
 the reason of her tremendous preoccupation with the 
 man on the night of my seizure — a preoccupation so 
 powerful that it had wrenched her thoughts com- 
 pletely away even from my supposed death. The 
 decisive moment had been approaching then, and 
 she had known it. She had known that within a brief 
 space the man's action would confer upon her either
 
 296 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 bliss or misery. It had conferred misery, and, hence- 
 forth, ' she was not one to marry.' 
 
 And all that she hid from me under her relentless 
 servility. 
 
 I could not fight successfully against her servility. 
 I could not ask her to sit. I could not rise. I could 
 not apologise. But I could regard her in the inviol- 
 able field of my own mind as a fellow-creature, — 
 not academically, but really, passionately. I could 
 sympathise with her in the abrupt drama of her 
 existence. My understanding thoughts went to her. 
 
 The conception of all Marion's past and of all 
 her future awed me as I invited it. She too had 
 been where I had been. She too had been cut off 
 from humanity ! She too had made the discovery 
 of the radiant form ! She too had constructed 
 paradises and witnessed their dissolution ! She too 
 had awakened to freedom, and seen the revealing 
 vision in the uncoloured light. She too had watched 
 universes winking in and out until the tale receded 
 into the supremest heights of coalescence where 
 personal memory expired, where outer individualities 
 are sloughed and new ones assumed. Only she did 
 not know. She could not know, at this stage of her 
 eternity. (I knew solely by virtue of the accident 
 which had thrown me back into the envelopes which 
 I had cast.) She was from everlasting to everlasting. 
 In her cap and apron she was from everlasting to
 
 MARION 297 
 
 everlasting. Our exterior relations were fantastically 
 absurd, with her servility and my incurable air of a 
 master. ... A divine radiance asking permission of 
 its fellow to speak ! Yes, fantastically absurd, but 
 scarcely to be modified save within the secret mind ! 
 Within the secret mind I raised her where she could 
 not mount. I dwelt on the grandeur of her long 
 history ; I carried her on from where she stood to the 
 sublime threshold of her ultimate destiny and return 
 to perfection ; until I was steeped in an ineffable 
 marvelling. 
 
 All else seemed to fail in importance against this 
 secret realisation of what I was and what others 
 were, and of the unique joy of sympathetic compre- 
 hension tending towards unity. 
 
 Marion primly shut the door, but not on my 
 thoughts, which followed her though she knew it not.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 EDITH 
 
 I WENT into my study and sat down at the desk. 
 It was covered with letters and unopened packets in 
 disorder, the collection of such a week as perhaps 
 not very many human beings have passed through. 
 Once or twice during the previous day or two I had 
 written briefly at the desk — for example, I had made 
 out a cheque there for the expenses of the funeral 
 — but I had scribbled standing, as at a passover, as 
 a man will when his existence is upheaved, indif- 
 ferently lodging my paper on the topmost layer of 
 the accumulation. The law against deranging the 
 contents of my desk had retained its sanction 
 throughout all those events. I knew, on that morn- 
 ing after the funeral, that I must resume or recom- 
 mence my life, and though I had no plan, no central 
 idea for activity, I knew that the preliminary of any 
 scheme would be the purgation of my desk. And I 
 set leisurely about it. 
 
 Delving, I came to a prescription of the doctor's, 
 stamped and numbered by the chemist who had 
 
 298
 
 EDITH 299 
 
 made it up. I could not recall when he had written 
 it, nor decide whether it was for Inez or for me. He 
 might have written it on the night of my angina 
 pectoris, as I lay in delirium. . . . All that was like 
 history now, and the doctor himself had receded 
 temporarily into history. In a day I had nearly 
 forgotten him. He had assisted intimately and 
 vitally at great crises of my existence, he had pro- 
 bably saved my life, he knew the nakedness of my 
 instincts, — and already I had put him away into a 
 closed cupboard of my memory. He had come, and 
 he had gone. 
 
 At length I arrived at the lowest stratum, the 
 writing-pad, with the weekly date-block a week in 
 arrear. I tore off the leaf. Scattered over the 
 blotting-paper were a number of little round marks. 
 They were the marks of the tears which Inez had 
 shed as she sat at the desk after her confession to 
 me. I had watched those tears fall one by one from 
 her cheeks, and there they were faintly preserved in 
 the blotting-paper. Across the blotting-paper, too, 
 was the record of Inez's large careless handwriting. 
 She had written, then, at my desk. With a paper- 
 knife I detached the upper sheet of blotting-paper 
 and held it reversed to the light. There were two 
 of Inez's writings on it, one across the other : tele- 
 grams. One was addressed to my sister and ran : 
 " Come instantly very serious. Morrice " — then two
 
 300 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 words that had not blotted — "Inez." The other 
 was clearer : " Realism London. Shall not come. 
 Inez." It was one of John Hulse's caprices to 
 have a registered telegraphic address, and ' realism ' 
 was the word he had chosen for it, characteristically. 
 Inez had sent off that telegram early on the morning 
 when she supposed me to be dead. She had not 
 told him that I was dead. She had not deigned to 
 tell him that I was dead ; or she had not known how 
 to frame the message. She had confined herself to 
 the essential. Doubtless it was upon the receipt of 
 this telegram that John Hulse, furious against the 
 instability of women, had fled suddenly in disgust 
 to Paris or somewhere, to rearrange his plans. 
 And he had not returned. As yet he probably 
 knew nothing, unless he had seen the English 
 papers. 
 
 I held the historical document in my hand, hesi- 
 tatingly. Then I tore it up into small pieces and 
 dropped it, gently, into the waste-paper basket. I 
 could not have kept it. Had I kept it I should have 
 deemed myself guilty of a repugnant sentimentality. 
 And perhaps it was too sacred to keep. 
 
 I mused a long time on history. Although it 
 was my pride to regard history with the large 
 magnanimous calm of a philosopher, I was shaken 
 by the unexpected revelation of that document. I 
 could not analyse my feelings. Let us say merely
 
 EDITH 3°i 
 
 that I was conscious of an exceeding strange 
 emotion. 
 
 And then the door leading from the drawing- 
 room was cautiously opened, and I saw the smiling, 
 rather roguish face of a woman in a large black hat, 
 and under that face the smiling serious face of a 
 little girl. They were peeping at me. Their playful 
 intention had been to startle the solitary man in his 
 study, and they had succeeded. 
 
 " I've brought Edith to see you," said Mary. 
 
 Holding my niece's hand she came into the 
 room. 
 
 To see these two together, especially in panoply, 
 was a moving sight. Mary gazed on her offspring 
 with a passionate and proud affection which no 
 reserve of demeanour could hide. It had always 
 seemed strange, piquant, to me that my sister should 
 be a mother like other women, and that she should 
 have passed through a great tragedy of her own. 
 My sister always seemed to me to be, not a grown-up 
 woman, but the girl that I had known as a youth, 
 brilliantly imitating a grown-up woman in appear- 
 ance, gesture, and wisdom. There were moments 
 when her face had the expression of a girl's, and not 
 at all of a mother's, of a widow's. And just now, as 
 she gazed at her child, it had the expression of a 
 girl's and of a mother's too. It was young, and yet 
 it was old. It was innocent, and yet it was
 
 302 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 experienced, disillusioned, and ironic. It had in it 
 everything. 
 
 Whenever she was with her child the glance of 
 her eye and the gestures of her body appeared to be 
 saying : " I am a sensible mother. I do not deceive 
 myself about Edith. I am not silly about her. I 
 treat her with firmness. I exact obedience. I am 
 not a slave to her. I do not consider her to be the 
 most marvellous child that was ever born. I merely 
 do my best to bring her up properly and to keep her 
 in good health. I am absolutely impartial concern- 
 ing her. The last thing I wish is to weary people 
 with her. . . . Still, you will probably admit of your 
 own accord that she does genuinely differ from the 
 ordinary." 
 
 You looked at Edith and, if you could see, you 
 saw a miracle. ... A delicate plant, and Mary, by 
 the long miracle of expert knowledge, watchfulness, 
 self-control and perseverance, was flowering it in 
 perfection. The contour of these cheeks, the exqui- 
 site bloom on them, — these were not Mary's creation, 
 but she had evolved them ; their flawlessness was her 
 creation. The white frock, cap, stockings, shoes, 
 gloves, — in every incredibly meticulous detail you 
 could discern Mary and her maternal passion. The 
 article was finished, in every way finished. The article 
 represented years of the activity of a first-class brain 
 and of a terrible affection. It was put forward, with
 
 EDITH 303 
 
 j u j 
 
 superficial negligence, as being a trifle, a mere female 
 infant conscientiously cared for, such as exists in 
 tens of thousands all over England. But in the 
 slight involuntary trembling of the head of the 
 mother, in the lifting of that head, in the proud dart 
 from the mother's eye, there was a supreme challenge. 
 It was as if Mary had cried aloud : 
 
 " There ! . . . Can you match it ? " 
 
 Edith, without instructions, came primly forward 
 to me, walking just as though she were a procession, 
 and raised her mouth to kiss my cheek. She had, I 
 knew, been taught never to kiss anybody on the 
 mouth except her mother. 
 
 " Good morning, uncle." 
 
 She stared at me curiously, wonderingly. 
 
 " Good morning, Edith." 
 
 I lifted my eyebrows as high as I could, in a 
 question, and stuck out my knee, glancing at it. 
 
 She smiled and nodded assent, and then I perched 
 her on my knee, and she smoothed her frock, and 
 sighed, looking round the room. In another moment, 
 a contraction of the muscles drawing her thighs into 
 line with her back warned me that she had had 
 enough of my knee. She slipped down, and leaned 
 against it, folding her arms like an old woman. That 
 fluffy cocoon of linen and lace was between my 
 knees, and I could detect the faint fine odour of a 
 new frock and of clean warm flesh. Both Mary and
 
 3o 4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I looked at her. She was quite accustomed to being 
 looked at. In spite of her mother's despotism and 
 frigid impartiality, she knew that she was the centre 
 of the world and the most important thing in it. 
 Her mother's stupendous and to her often tiresome 
 particularity in all that concerned her was a subtle 
 and intense flattery to her. 
 
 "I was thinking," said Mary. "You wouldn't 
 mind me leaving her here this morning while I go 
 and do some errands." 
 
 She said it with an offhand air, simulated. A 
 prevarication, of course ! Mary had brought Edith 
 with the sole aim of distracting me. She had been 
 saying to herself: "It would be a good thing for 
 him to have Edith for a while. It would take him 
 out of himself." And she had determined to accord 
 me the incomparable toy, the toy beyond rubies. 
 
 "The point is," I said, "whether we can trust 
 mother to go out alone, isn't it, Edith ? " 
 
 "Yes," she agreed, smiling confidentially at her 
 mother, as if to say : " We must humour this clown, 
 because we like him." 
 
 As soon as Marion had been summoned and we 
 had arranged that mother and daughter should lunch 
 with me, Mary prepared to depart. 
 
 "Aren't you going to take your hat and gloves 
 off, Edith, or do you prefer to keep them on ? " the 
 mother enquired.
 
 EDITH 
 
 305 
 
 " Can I go into uncle's bedroom ? " Edith asked. 
 " Why of course ! " I said. " There are several 
 
 glasses. 
 
 " Better kiss me before you go," said her mother. 
 " There's no knowing how long you'll be, and I can't 
 wait." 
 
 They kissed. No injunction from the mother to 
 the child to be good, no specific behests or prohibi- 
 tions ! Another of Mary's fads was never to train 
 her child in public. Edith went towards the little 
 door, raised her arm to turn the knob, turned it with 
 difficulty, and vanished, shutting the door behind 
 her, to remove her street attire. 
 
 " There was one thing I thought of," said Mary, 
 as soon as we were alone, with the change of voice 
 that the departure of a child always brings about. 
 " I thought I'd better mention it to you at once. 
 Would you like me to go through Inez' things for 
 you ? Or would you prefer to do that yourself? It 
 won't do to leave them about indefinitely, will it ? " 
 
 The immediate propriety of this task had not 
 occurred to me. 
 
 " I wish you would," I said. 
 
 " Of course you'll keep the jewellery," she said. 
 
 "Yes," I said. 
 
 We could neither of us speak in natural tones. 
 
 I followed Mary out of the room to the vestibule. 
 There we encountered the cook, who, excited about 
 
 x
 
 3o6 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the lunch, was anxious to learn exactly what Miss 
 Edith might and would eat. A considerable discus- 
 sion ensued, fostered by the cook. The cook kept 
 protesting that not for the whole world would she 
 have anything happen to Miss Edith, through her 
 agency, in the way of indigestion. Seeing that Mary 
 scarcely ever brought Edith to London, it was highly 
 perspicuous of the cook to have divined that Edith 
 was in fact the centre of the world. 
 
 When I went back to the study I discovered 
 Edith sliding down from a chair in front of a dwarf 
 bookcase. The top of this bookcase was the 
 appointed place of my crimson Bernard-Moore vase. 
 The vase now lay on the carpet, in three pieces, 
 
 " I don't know what mother will say ! " Edith 
 murmured, smoothing her frock again, and glancing 
 at me. Her face was flushed. "You know, I'm 
 always climbing, and mother can't understand it, and 
 I'm sure I can't." 
 
 "Perhaps the vase fell off by itself," I said. 
 "Vases sometimes do, especially red vases." 
 
 " Oh no ! " she assured me. " I got on to the 
 chair and knocked against it, and off it fell. I 
 nearly-nearly caught it, but vases are so slippery." 
 
 " What did you get on the chair for ? " 
 
 " So that I could see on to the top of the book- 
 case. Mother says she's afraid I shall be a 
 mountaineer."
 
 EDITH 3°7 
 
 " What is a mountaineer ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Uncle ! Don't you know ' Excelsior ' ? I 
 do. ' A banner with the strange device.' That's a 
 mountaineer. Only mother says they never go up 
 at night. They always start before breakfast, before 
 even the gas-lamps are turned out. So it is night 
 after all, but backwards. I don't know what mother 
 will say !" 
 
 "Will she be angry?" 
 
 " Oh ! No ! She's never angry. She reasons 
 with me. I wish she would be angry. When she 
 reasons with me it's awful. It makes me so ashamed. 
 Then she asks me whether I don't think I ought to 
 do something to myself to make me remember. And 
 of course I say I ought, because I ought. Then I 
 have to think of something that I can do to myself. 
 So mother doesn't punish me, I punish myself. Mother 
 says in the end we always punish ourselves when we 
 go against reason. And it's very difficult." 
 
 "What is?" 
 
 " Punishing myself. Sometimes I feel afterwards 
 somehow as if I'd punished myself too hard, and 
 sometimes not hard enough. I know how I shall 
 have to punish myself for this. I'm invited to a 
 garden-party to-morrow afternoon, and I shall have 
 to punish myself by not going. I can't see anything 
 else for it. And I did want to go, because there'll be 
 ices. And I can only have ices when I'm out.
 
 3o8 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Mother says ices are quite against reason, but when 
 I'm out I can have a little one, because it's not nice 
 to seem peculiar in your ways." 
 
 "Well," I said. "If I were you I shouldn't 
 breathe a word about this vase business to anyone." 
 
 " Not to mother ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 "But I must. I've broken it." 
 
 " Well ! It's my vase. Suppose I thank you for 
 breaking it ? Suppose I wanted it broken ? " 
 
 " But I was climbing up things. No sooner had 
 I got into the room than I began climbing up things ! 
 And I'm always doing it, away from home. I don't 
 do it much at home because I've been up nearly 
 everything at home, and I know what's on the top 
 of everything." 
 
 " And supposing I say that I like you to climb 
 up ? Supposing I tell you that curiosity is a great 
 virtue ? " 
 
 "Is it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " I shall have to tell mother. So it's no use." 
 
 " It seems to me that you don't care twopence 
 what I think. It's only what your mother thinks 
 that you care about. After all, it's my vase you've 
 broken, not your mother's. If I'd been sorry about 
 it you would have had to apologise to me and say 
 how sorry you were and all that sort of thing. But
 
 EDITH 3°9 
 
 as I'm glad, and as I don't want any fuss made, and 
 as I like you to have an ice now and then, and as 
 I'm not very well and have to be humoured — I think 
 I ought to be allowed to decide what's going to 
 happen. Besides, you're an independent human 
 being, aren't you ? " 
 
 " That's what mother often says." 
 
 " And I'm a great deal older than your mother." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " I shall have to tell mother." 
 
 " Very well, then," I yielded. " But let's pick up 
 the pieces." 
 
 I bent down to pick up the pieces. But Edith 
 did not follow me. When I looked at her again, I 
 saw her lower lip dropping, dropping, and all the 
 curves of her face developing angles. She was in 
 the gravest danger of tears. And I had not sus- 
 pected it. I had thought that she had been arguing 
 the point of conduct with a complete absence of 
 emotion. The threatened fit of crying seemed like 
 a catastrophe to me. And it was perilously imminent. 
 I dropped the pieces of vase on to a table, and took 
 Edith in my arms and sat down with her in the 
 easy-chair, and tried to soothe her grief. I had her 
 close to me. Her head was on my waistcoat, and her 
 bared little legs sprawling over mine, and her hair 
 about my chin. I could feel her heart beating, and 
 the thrill of her body. I could feel a sob gathering
 
 310 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 within her to burst. I murmured to her. ... It was 
 the narrowest escape. A trifle, a nothing, and she 
 would have wept violently ! But the storm edged 
 off. After a few moments she gazed up at me with 
 a melancholy smile. I had an extraordinary and 
 exquisite sense of intimacy with her. 
 
 " Perhaps I needn't tell mother," she whispered. 
 
 " Well," I said, " I don't want to over-persuade 
 you. You do as you like. But if I were you I 
 should say nothing about it." 
 
 " And it is very hot weather, isn't it ? " 
 
 " What's that got to do with it ? " 
 
 " It's so what I call icy weather." 
 
 " You're right," I said. " It's very icy weather." 
 
 Later she said : 
 
 "Well, that's over! But you know, uncle, 
 you're only pretending you don't care for that 
 vase." 
 
 " I'm not saying it wasn't a decent sort of vase," 
 I replied. 
 
 " Was it hers ? " She asked in an awed voice. 
 
 "Whose?" 
 
 " Auntie's." In a still lower tone. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " There I go again ! " said Edith. " Mother said 
 I was not to say anything to you at all about Auntie. 
 But I really couldn't help that. If it had been 
 Auntie's vase I think I should have had to tell
 
 EDITH 311 
 
 mother, then. So I was bound to know. . . . Then, 
 why were you so fond of it ? " 
 
 "I'll tell you why I was fond of it. But you 
 mustn't tell anybody." 
 
 "Not mother?" 
 
 "No. Not mother. I was once in this room 
 when everything melted away except that vase. 
 There was nothing except that vase, sticking up by 
 itself out of nothing." 
 
 " But weren't you dreaming, uncle ? " 
 
 " No. I wasn't dreaming." 
 
 "Did you pinch yourself to make sure you 
 weren't dreaming?" 
 
 " No. But I knew I wasn't." 
 
 She reflected. 
 
 " I suppose things do happen like that some- 
 times," she said calmly. " I've always thought 
 everything was very queer." 
 
 We were silent. We said no more on that 
 subject. Never since have I mentioned that subject 
 to anybody. And were I to mention it I should 
 never perhaps get a response so startling and so 
 satisfactory as Edith's. 
 
 I suggested to her the wisdom of hiding the vase, 
 and she agreed. Standing on tiptoe, I gently dropped 
 the pieces, one after another, behind the cornice of 
 my highest bookcase. 
 
 " I wish I was as tall as you, uncle," she said.
 
 3i2 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 "Then I should never have to climb, and mother 
 would be ever so much happier. But I suppose it 
 wouldn't do for me to be taller than mother." 
 
 "Now I think I shall write a letter for another 
 vase," I said. " But I shan't tell the man that this 
 one is broken. Because he's a genius and he never 
 makes two alike, and he hates to hear of them being 
 broken." 
 
 " Do they cost a lot ? " 
 
 " No. About two or three pounds. The Chinese 
 used to make them thousands of years ago, and then 
 nobody was able to make them any more till this man 
 found out how to make them, because he's a genius." 
 
 " I wish you hadn't told me all that, uncle." 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 "It makes me begin to feel sorry again. . . . 
 Uncle ! " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " As I've mentioned her once, I suppose I might as 
 well mention her again. Auntie used to give me a 
 chocolate when mother brought me to see her. And 
 it's such a long time since I was here. Perhaps if I 
 could have a chocolate it would do my sorryness 
 good." 
 
 " Next time," I said. For I was actually without 
 this necessary of life. 
 
 " I think I know where Auntie used to keep 
 them," she insinuated.
 
 EDITH 313 
 
 And as a fact she did know. She found a pro- 
 vision of chocolates in a lacquer box in the drawing- 
 room. And I had never known that there were 
 chocolates in that lacquer box. I passed the whole 
 morning in making the acquaintance of Edith. She 
 had visited me before, and I had visited her. But it 
 was six months since I had seen her, and in that 
 time a new Edith had supplanted the old one. 
 
 A very dramatic thing happened when Mary 
 returned, for lunch. Edith and I, after touring round 
 most of the flat, were back in the study. Mary 
 entered, hot and hurried, and with a self-conscious 
 mien. She kissed her daughter absently, negligently, 
 and walked almost straight across the room towards 
 the dwarf bookcase from which the vase had toppled. 
 
 " Why ! " she exclaimed. " What have you done 
 with your rouge ftambe' vase ? " 
 
 It was just one of those sinister coincidences 
 which victimise children, rendering earth an impos- 
 sible habitation for them. I dared not look at 
 Edith, but I knew that she must be reddening. I 
 felt that all depended on my courage and tact. 
 
 " Oh ! " I answered. " I've been rearranging 
 things. I've put it on the top of a bookcase." 
 
 Happily she did not enquire further. I per- 
 ceived that she was very preoccupied. 
 
 "Captain Hulse is back in town," she said the 
 next moment. She flushed. She could not speak
 
 3i4 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 his name, the impassible Mary, without flushing ! 
 I too was confused, but not for the same reason 
 as she. 
 
 " Have you seen him ?" I asked. 
 
 " No. But I've been telephoning to him at the 
 Club. He'd sent a note for me there. He only got 
 back this morning, — and found both the letters I'd 
 written to him. It must have been a fearful shock 
 for him, of course ! He's coming to see you this 
 afternoon or to-night." 
 
 There stood Edith, looking at me, conscious that 
 events had with grievous suddenness lessened her 
 importance to me.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 JOHNNIE'S RETURN 
 
 THAT afternoon I sat in my study, engaged in 
 nothing but thought. I had not as yet found interest 
 again in any kind of work. The occupations of my 
 brain were Inez and, after her, the beings by whom 
 I was surrounded. My concerned curiosity about 
 the ordeals of Inez, and the fresh piquancy of regard- 
 ing my fellow-creatures as immortals passing through 
 a phase of eclipse, — I had in this matter and this 
 experience more than enough to make the minutes fly. 
 You may say I had always known that death must 
 bring strange ordeals in its train ; you may say I had 
 always known that my fellow-creatures must be in 
 one sense or another immortal, that at least the stuff 
 of them was uncreated and indestructible. Yes, it 
 is true that I had always known. But it is also true 
 that I had never realised. The realisation pleasurably 
 animated every instant of my day. My thoughts 
 hovered eagerly round it as the thoughts of a man of 
 genius will hover round the discovery which he has 
 
 3'5
 
 3 i6 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 made. All my senses were titillated, as when one is 
 seeing a foreign country for the first time. 
 
 Mary, before setting out in the morning, had said 
 that she could not stay after lunch. But later she 
 had changed her mind. And now she was employed 
 in the bedroom, going through all Inez' things and 
 deciding for me what was to happen to them. Marion 
 was helping her. Edith slumbered in the dining- 
 room. The child could not have slept in the bed- 
 room without completely stopping her mother's work, 
 and Mary would not allow her to monopolise the 
 drawing-room. Mary had two principles in the care 
 of her daughter: Edith must never inconvenience 
 others, and Edith must always be perfectly tended. 
 The war of these two opposing principles sometimes 
 caused difficulties that only Mary's brain could solve. 
 The lunch-table had to be cleared very quickly, and 
 the dining-room cleansed of the odours of food by 
 Mary's own process of ventilation. Two armchairs 
 had to be placed front to front, and a shawl stretched 
 over their seats. Then Edith had to be lifted into 
 this pen out of which the accidents of sleep could 
 not tumble her ; and she had to be covered, neither 
 too lightly nor too heavily. That Edith would duly 
 sleep in this peculiar contrivance and these unfamiliar 
 surroundings seemed to be axiomatic in the minds 
 of both Mary and Edith. Edith smiled at us in fare- 
 well, and the doors of the dining-room were closed on
 
 JOHNNIE'S RETURN 317 
 
 her ; and Mary assured everybody that the ordinary 
 existence of the flat might and must proceed as 
 usual, with no precautions whatever of silence, as 
 Edith's faculty of sleep had been trained to ignore 
 all noises exterior to the room in which she actually 
 was. Nevertheless the flat was hushed. Edith 
 slumbered. Edith was taking the rest which was 
 essential to the perfect development of a young 
 child. This fact coloured the consciousness of all. 
 More, it produced a solemn joy in the flat, where no 
 child had lived. 
 
 I thought of the placid and sad activities of the 
 women, and of the slumber of the young child ; and 
 the thought was happiness. 
 
 Then I heard vague sounds, sign of disturbance 
 of the current of our existence. And then talking in 
 the drawing-room. I could not mistake that voice. 
 It was the magnificent and rich voice of John Hulse. 
 He had come, then ! I did not doubt that it was for 
 this Mary had stayed. 
 
 I shook with excitement, with apprehension. 
 The image of John Hulse, which had been chained 
 and hidden by force at the back of my mind, leaped 
 forward like a beast into an arena, scattering every- 
 thing. He had come to pay his visit. He had 
 dared the adventure. He was bound to come. Con- 
 vention compelled him to come. He had not dared 
 to stay away. ... I was the outraged husband, he
 
 318 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 the virtual adulterer. Chance alone had prevented 
 the consummation of the injury against me. Here 
 was the man who had made a rendezvous with my 
 wife in my drawing-room after dining with me. I 
 had to meet him. I might have written to him and 
 prevented the meeting. I might have told my secret 
 to Mary, and so prevented the meeting ; but I had 
 done nothing. If I followed social precedent, any but 
 formal and brief intercourse between us was impos- 
 sible. If I followed social precedent I should indicate 
 to him, by a glance, a tone, or a horsewhip, that I 
 was aware of my misfortune and of his share in it ; 
 and he would quit the flat at once, never to re-enter 
 it. And I should stand in the midst of my hearthrug 
 with anger sated. 
 
 But I could not feel a genuine anger. Some- 
 thing base in me tried to summon up a genuine anger, 
 and failed. I could not be at once resentful against 
 him and honest with myself. . . . ' What ! Love 
 your enemies by all means, but love the man who 
 has tried to seduce your wife ? Monstrous ! ' I am 
 on what is termed dangerous ground here. But I 
 am indifferent because I feel so secure. The deepest 
 feeling in me was one of sympathy with John Hulse. 
 Call it monstrous. It may be monstrous that the 
 deepest feeling in me was one of sympathy with John 
 Hulse ; but it is true. I understood him so well ; I 
 understood Inez so well. I could see the germination
 
 JOHNNIE'S RETURN 319 
 
 of the sentiment between them. An inflection from 
 her, a glance from him, and it was born. They both 
 ignored it at first, but there it was, growing. From 
 ignoring it, they came to smiling at it. Then it 
 tempted them. It tempted Inez more than John 
 Hulse. She more than Johnnie fed it with the 
 strengthening food of reflection. I could hear her 
 words, uttered to me in the room where I was : 
 I've stood it too long . . . getting up in the morning with 
 the feeling that no man was thinking about me . . . 
 tliat no man was happy or unJiappy because of me. . . . 
 How many years have I stood that? . . . These words, 
 or words to that effect! The original fault was 
 mine. My enormous egoism had brought it about. 
 I had not been clever enough even to divine my 
 wife's habitual thoughts on getting up in the morn- 
 ing ! And the words of Inez which above all others 
 sounded in my ears were the slashing, wounding 
 phrase : It was just like you ! A phrase spoken 
 under a misapprehension, a phrase entirely unjust as 
 she meant it ; but how terribly indicative of the 
 attitude of mind towards me which my bland conduct 
 had induced in her ! How expressive of the secret 
 bitterness with which my attitude towards her had 
 impregnated her love for me ! For she had loved 
 me. The abandonment of her outburst when she 
 had flung herself on my lifeless body was proof 
 enough that throughout her relations with Johnnie
 
 3 2o THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Hulse she had loved me. It was my intellectual 
 pride and the ferocity of my artistic egoism that, 
 after desolating her, had pricked her into the arms of 
 Johnnie Hulse. ... I knew the arguments which 
 she would use to excuse herself to herself, and the 
 arguments which he would use. I could appreciate 
 their seductive plausibility. . . . After all (they 
 would say) why not ? It can't hurt him ! It's 
 nobody's concern but ours ! It's nothing ! . . . And 
 so the sentiment kept on growing, until it com- 
 manded and was imperious ; and perhaps it frightened 
 and fascinated Inez. 
 
 I knew so well what Hulse would be saying to 
 himself that it was as if I had actually been Hulse. 
 How he would conquer his first distaste for the 
 caprice by what he was used to call the ' de-senti- 
 mentalisation ' of it, the stripping away from it of 
 all conventional preconceptions ! . . . I knew his 
 immense conviction that in love there was on 1 y one 
 crime — the crime of indiscretion. I knew the terrific 
 force of habit upon him. I knew the certainty in 
 him that he was acting justifiably for the happiness 
 of himself and of Inez, and that his one duty 
 to me in the matter was to deceive me with 
 adequate skill. I knew that he was perfectly 
 capable of deceiving me while retaining all his 
 affection for me. I knew that the constant ten- 
 dency of hypocrisy is to deny the capacity of the
 
 JOHNNIE'S RETURN 321 
 
 human heart to respond to opposing feelings simul- 
 taneously. 
 
 Inez and John Hulse, these two also were the 
 blind and pathetic victims of desire, as I had been. 
 And was I to curse and wither the survivor in the 
 affected attitudes of Victorian tragedy? . . . John 
 Hulse, from everlasting to everlasting, imprisoned for 
 a moment in a radiant envelope of illusion, and that 
 envelope attached to a gross body of still more fan- 
 tastic illusion ; and the episode with Inez a capricious 
 error of the gross body, a sin far more against John 
 Hulse than against me, and at most a moment within 
 a trifling moment of eternity ! A misfortune for him, 
 not a crime ! And neither a misfortune nor a crime, 
 but a nothing — nothing in the vast and majestic 
 evolution of the divine particle that named itself, just 
 now, John Hulse ! I, with my acquired perspective, 
 could only ignore the negligible transient vagary of 
 the flesh that for a moment impeded John Hulse's 
 true consciousness of himself. 
 
 And yet, while I reasoned thus, my hand trembled 
 at the prospect of having to meet Johnnie Hulse, for 
 I. doubted whether I possessed sufficient force to 
 triumph, in practice, against convention. And) I 
 guessed that he too was apprehending the interview 
 with fear, was wondering anxiously whether Inez had 
 confessed to me before she died, was consoling himself 
 with the reflection that at any rate it would be best 
 
 Y
 
 322 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 to get the interview over, for good or for evil. And 
 the appreciation of his state increased my nervous- 
 ness. So that I could not bring myself to rise and 
 go into the drawing-room. He was talking to Mary 
 even more loudly than usual, — evidence that he was 
 indeed nervous and excited. I must go to him. If 
 I did not go to him, Mary, totally unaware of the two 
 dramas hidden on either side of her, would be coming 
 to fetch me. 
 
 I arrived at the door between the two rooms, my 
 fingers on the knob. Involuntarily I made the 
 knob click. I was bound to enter, then, and I did 
 enter, suddenly. 
 
 He stood on the hearthrug in his familiar favourite 
 posture, with his hands behind him, listening to 
 something that Mary was saying about our doctor. 
 He wore a light travelling suit, as if he had just 
 arrived from beneath the suns of a scorching climate. 
 But his face was rather pale. He turned at my entry, 
 and Mary ceased speaking. Our eyes met. My 
 throat was so strangely dry that I could not articu- 
 late a word. He hesitated, and then, approaching 
 me, he held out his hand. His features showed the 
 uncertainty of his thoughts. 
 
 " Well, old man," he exclaimed, " I'm back, you 
 see!" 
 
 His hand seized mine. I said to myself: " Unless 
 I can control myself better than this, he will guess
 
 JOHNNIE'S RETURN 323 
 
 that Inez confessed to me, and everything will be 
 finished between us." Then a happy instinct 
 prompted me to press his hand strongly. He was 
 reassured. Both he and Mary imagined that my 
 emotion was merely that of the widower, meeting 
 for the first time after bereavement his close friend 
 and the friend of his wife. The mistake was natural. 
 I sat down. The worst of the ordeal was over.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 
 
 " Well, Johnnie," I said, " what's the meaning of 
 this mysterious disappearance ? " 
 
 I put the question to him almost innocently, 
 almost as though I was not perfectly aware of the 
 origin of his flight. Even to myself I played the 
 man who knew nothing. 
 
 " I had to go off to Paris to see Durand-Ruel," 
 he replied, quite at ease. " I had the letter at nine, 
 and I caught the ten-o'clock train." 
 
 "Not like you to be up so early as all that," 
 I said. 
 
 The 'letter' which he had received was, of 
 course, Inez' telegram. 
 
 "And when I was once there, I didn't see the 
 point of coming back. The fact is, I went down 
 to the Cafe des Lilas, and found a new lot there, 
 naturally ! Infants, most of them ! Simple infants ! 
 Of course I had to go to the Bal Bullier. You're 
 always hearing people say that the Bal Bullier is 
 
 324
 
 THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 325 
 
 nothing to what it used to be. Rubbish ! It always 
 was half sham and half real. It's just as fine as 
 ever it was. The band is just as loud and the beer 
 is just as poisonous. The girls and boys throw them- 
 selves into the dancing with just the same frenzy as 
 ever, and the hips of the girls have just the same 
 vulgar agreeable swing. Only there are more lights, 
 and the fireworks are infinitely better. But you 
 never were allowed to take your walking-stick into 
 the hall, and you aren't now. The Bullier hasn't 
 changed, except for the better. It's we that have 
 changed. I met old Lazarus there — you know, 
 Conduit Street — sighing that the old days were 
 gone, etc. I told him straight that he made me 
 simply ill. I told him he looked like a crow and 
 that he ought to have been one. Some of those 
 fellows will almost thank you for insulting them. . . . 
 I thought it wouldn't do me any harm. to have a 
 few days at a big life-class. So I went to Calarossi's. 
 Hadn't a thing with me, of course. But I called 
 at old Lefebre-Foinet's in the Rue Vavin, and he 
 fitted me up. Same as ever. . . . Told me that 
 Slaxon, A.R.A., if you please still owed him over 
 two thousand francs for colours. Still, he seems to 
 flourish on bad debts. He's made a fortune out of 
 bad debts. He too began to talk to me about the 
 dear dead days beyond recall. ... I don't know 
 what people mean when they go on like that. The
 
 326 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 fact is, people never do talk like that till their souls 
 have died in their bodies. When you come near 
 some of 'em you can sniff their decaying souls, 
 positively." 
 
 " Really " Mary protested. 
 
 " Yes, really ! " he insisted, not excusing the 
 violence of his imagery. " / can, anyway. I can 
 tell you there wasn't much deadness down at 
 Calarossi's. My poor friends, the vital smell on a 
 hot evening ! My poor friends, the heat ! Models 
 in the same poses ! All the same atrocious jokes ! 
 The same appallingly bad work, and here and there 
 a bit of slap-up ! Same American virgins, talking 
 neither French nor English ! It did me good. And 
 I learnt something about what was going on, — I 
 mean really going on ; not what you read in the 
 Gazette des Beaux Arts. I lived at the Hotel de la 
 Place de l'Odeon, and ate either at the Tour d'Argent 
 or Laperouse. And after I'd done with Durand- 
 Ruel, I assure you I never once re-crossed the river. 
 Then all of a sudden I got sick of it, oh ! so sick 
 of it I couldn't stand it a minute longer! I don't 
 know — it all seemed to me so — I don't know! I 
 spent my last night at the Ritz, and went to the 
 Marigny — I don't know why. That was only the 
 night before last. I meant to have come home 
 by the four train yesterday afternoon, but I 
 fidgeted about too long and missed it. So I
 
 THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 327 
 
 got to London this morning, — and found your 
 letters ! " 
 
 With the last four words he glanced at Mary, 
 and there was an extraordinary change in his voice. 
 The change in his magnificent voice made Mary's 
 eyes humid, and I could feel a swift tightness in 
 the throat. Strange and powerful individuality ! The 
 most original, perhaps, I have ever known. Who 
 could have guessed, from the passionate vehemence 
 with which he threw out the description of his week 
 in Paris, that within the previous few hours he had 
 learnt of the death, amid astounding circumstances, 
 of the woman who was to have become his mistress ? 
 Who could have guessed that his mind had the 
 slightest preoccupation ? And yet in the tone of those 
 last four words — 'and found your letters'— he in a 
 flash revealed the depths of a mine of feeling, moving 
 us both. Not that he was regarding the dead 
 woman as a lost mistress. No ! He had rushed 
 to Paris in order to enable himself to see that that 
 affair of the heart was factitious and unworthy of its 
 danger, and he had succeeded. He was regarding 
 the dead woman as the heroic victim in his friend's 
 tragedy ; he was regarding her as a familiar, and 
 as a human being. I had perfectly convinced him 
 that I knew nothing, and so his conscience was 
 at rest, and there was no fear in his eyes when 
 they met mine.
 
 328 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Mary, captured by the magic of his tone, by the 
 tremendous life in him, and by his careless sincerity 
 of expression, stared at him admiringly. She seemed 
 to be quite unaware of herself. Unconsciously she 
 leaned a little towards him from her chair, looking 
 up at him, her lips somewhat parted. Her face 
 glowed ; her eyes sparkled. Even the least observant 
 would have decided instantly : " That woman is in 
 love with that man, and very much in love." Could 
 she have seen herself she would have been very 
 painfully shocked. She so correct, so reserved, so 
 independent, so proud ! She in mourning ! She a 
 mother ! But she could not see herself. It was her 
 blind and innocent unconsciousness that redeemed 
 the crudeness of the situation, that made the situation 
 fine. And after all she was not a mother, nor in 
 mourning, nor jealous for the dignity of her sex. 
 She was a vigorous and sane woman deeply in 
 love. 
 
 "Tell me," said Johnnie Hulse. "I hope she 
 didn't have to suffer a great deal." 
 
 He frowned. Possibly a more ordinary friend 
 would have kept away from the great subject until 
 later in the interview ; or, having arrived at it by 
 chance or by intention, would have been forced by 
 tradition into expressions of sympathy or sorrow. 
 But not Johnnie Hulse. He seemed to follow his 
 thoughts heedless of us. And his frown was nearly
 
 THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 329 
 
 menacing, — as though, if Inez had suffered, he would 
 be capable of accusing us. The spectacle of futile 
 suffering generally led him to criticise savagely a 
 being whom he considered to have been badly 
 invented — the occidental God. 
 
 I shook my head, and answered quickly, before 
 Mary could speak, to show that I could talk about 
 Inez as calmly as anybody : 
 
 " She was too weak to suffer much." 
 " That's good ! " he murmured. " That's good ! " 
 There followed a silence, which he broke by 
 asking Mary : 
 
 " How long did you say she survived ? " 
 At the same moment the door from the dining- 
 room was pushed open and Edith came in. She 
 had wakened up from a long sleep — perhaps the 
 voice of Johnnie Hulse had entered into her dreams 
 — and had climbed out of her pen and blindly 
 tottered, rather than walked, towards her mother. 
 She was no longer the prim and precocious maiden, 
 but the little animal half-aroused. Her hair was 
 tangled, her frock disarranged, and her delicious 
 face still swollen and crimson with sleep. She 
 rubbed her eyes with boyish fists, and looked on 
 the ground. As she approached her mother, she 
 threw her head back, to get the hair out of her 
 blinking eyes, and smiled in a daze. Her mother 
 took her, and kissed her, and with persuading fingers
 
 330 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 smoothed her outlines into some sort of drawing- 
 room decency. And Edith bridled and yielded 
 under the touches, smiling again when her mother 
 expressed privately to her an acute surprise that a 
 young woman so experienced in the ways of the 
 world should enter her uncle's drawing-room in such 
 a condition of dishevelment. 
 
 " This is my daughter, Edith," said Mary. 
 a Edith, dear, will you go and shake hands with 
 Captain Hulse, a friend of your uncle's and your 
 mother's ? " 
 
 These two had not met before. And apparently 
 Edith was not anxious that they should meet now. 
 She hung back, hesitating, reluctant. Johnnie made 
 a step towards her, and waited. Some would doubt- 
 less urge that it was the infallible instinct of child- 
 hood that held her away from the man who was 
 absorbing so much of her mother's affection. But a 
 child's instinct is just as infallible as that of a dog — 
 that is to say, it errs frequently. Mary bent down, 
 whispering, and her hair touched Edith's, and 
 edges of Edith's frock were lost in the folds of 
 Mary's black dress. And then Edith detached 
 herself, like a boat from a ship, and walked sedately 
 across to meet Johnnie Hulse at the edge of the 
 hearthrug. 
 
 " How do you do ? " she said stiffly, holding 
 out her trifling hand.
 
 THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 331 
 
 " My dear !" Johnnie Hulse responded, in quick, 
 generous comradeship, and took her hand politely in 
 his large, pale, hairy one. His smile embraced her. 
 Upon the least sign of encouragement or even 
 acquiescence from her he would have picked her up 
 in his arms and by degrees kissed her ; he was an 
 impassioned defender of children, and a subscriber to 
 the S.P.C.C. But she averted her eyes, and drew off. 
 Her greeting was the minimum of politeness. She 
 looked at her mother and then at me, and perceiving 
 that she had not enchanted her mother by this 
 chilliness towards Captain Hulse, she came to me, 
 and permitted herself to be perched on my knees. 
 She and I were now bound together by the sinister 
 secret of the vase. Her body was still all warm 
 with sleep. 
 
 We could not maintain a conversation about 
 death in presence of Edith ; and Mary began to 
 discuss the question of holidays, saying that I in 
 particular needed a change, not to speak of Edith. 
 And she referred to Edith's tastes in the matter of 
 pleasure resorts, trying obviously to get Edith to 
 talk. But Edith would not be drawn from her 
 reserve. Mary was the mother now, as well as the 
 woman in love. She sought to reconcile the two 
 rOles. It was a most wonderful sight to see these 
 contrary winds blowing across her features. She 
 wanted to recommend Johnnie Hulse to her daughter,
 
 332 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 and yet she knew that recommendation would be 
 useless and that Edith's feelings alone would guide 
 her. And Mary's clear conviction that Johnnie must 
 of necessity be at once captivated by the charm of 
 Edith, — this conviction was almost pathetic in its 
 simplicity. 
 
 Then tea was served. Mary talked, and Johnnie 
 talked ; and I talked a little. Edith ate solemnly, 
 sharing my tea, and using my saucer as a base of 
 supplies. I felt that if only my vision had been 
 keener, I could have descried Mary's unuttered 
 appeal to Johnnie Hulse: "Can't you make friends 
 with her?" 
 
 When tea was nearly over, I said casually to 
 Edith : 
 
 " He's all right, isn't he ? " 
 
 " Who ? " 
 
 I indicated Johnnie with a discreet jerk of the 
 head. 
 
 She nodded. She had been watching him in- 
 tently, and listening, but with the detached, impartial 
 mien of a Chief Justice. 
 
 "Well," I said, "go and take his cup; he's 
 finished. . . . Will you ? " 
 
 She brought her legs and back into a straight 
 line, slid down, and obeyed. 
 
 " May I take your cup ? " she asked him. 
 
 He was still standing.
 
 THE LOVER AND THE MOTHER 
 
 OOJ 
 
 " That's very kind of you," he said. " I was 
 just going to put it on the mantelpiece. Will 
 you put it on the mantelpiece ? " He gave her 
 the cup. 
 
 " I can't reach," she piped. 
 
 " Oh yes," he said, and lifted her, the cup rattling 
 in the saucer as he did so ; and she reached the 
 mantelpiece. 
 
 She laughed shortly, for a sign that she was 
 prepared to accept him provisionally on his merits. 
 And within half a minute they were seated on the 
 same chair. Mary's relief was childlike, painful in 
 its obviousness. 
 
 Soon afterwards Mary announced that she must 
 go, on account of Edith. She was content, and she 
 wanted to depart in the mood of contentment. She 
 felt, no doubt, that her sensations sufficed for one day. 
 Johnnie suggested that he and I should drive them 
 to the station and then take a turn in the park. 
 The ladies retired, with equal primness, to make 
 each other ready. 
 
 Johnnie and I stood silent together. 
 
 " Look here, man ! " he said suddenly. " I'm not 
 going to say anything to you in the sympathetic 
 line. Not necessary, and I can't do it ! You 
 know me, and I know you. And that's enough. 
 Eh ? " 
 
 I assented with a gesture.
 
 334 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 I was startled by a little wave of emotion that 
 expressed itself by a touch of his hand on my 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Perhaps some day we may talk about 
 things," he muttered. "But it'll have to come by 
 itself." 
 
 Undoubtedly he was profoundly moved. 
 
 "Yes," I said.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE DISAPPEARANCE 
 
 At half-past six in the morning as usual, I went 
 forth out of the house, by the little wicket set in 
 the large double-portals, and idled in the sunshine 
 of the street until the Fontainebleau postman, chiefly 
 attired in pale linen, came down past the Palace 
 from the head post-office. 
 
 This transmigration to Fontainebleau seems 
 sudden to you, and it seemed sudden to me. The 
 fact was that, in my indifference, I had become the 
 sport of Mary. August was nearly upon us, and 
 Mary, owing to a variety of causes, had made no 
 definite arrangements for her holiday and Edith's. 
 In the discussion of this question, on our way to 
 the station after my first meeting as a widower with 
 Johnnie Hulse, Johnnie had happened to mention 
 Fontainebleau. During his stay in Paris ho had 
 been down to Fontainebleau, and had seen a 
 furnished house there which was highly picturesque 
 and inconvenient. It stood, the next habitation to 
 the Palace, adjoining the Palace, and was to be had 
 
 335
 
 3 36 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 for sixty pounds for the season. Mary appeared to 
 decide in an instant, in the cab itself, that she would 
 take that house, if it was still available. Whenever 
 she was with Johnnie, a sort of recklessness, a mood 
 of brusque resolutions, took possession of her ; and 
 certainly what he said had a strange influence over 
 her. It chanced that neither she nor I had been 
 to Fontainebleau. Therefore I was to accompany 
 her. A change was imperative for me, I was told. 
 Moreover, Edith had a French nurse. (She had 
 already had a German and was soon to have an 
 Italian attendant, so that she might be talkative 
 in the principal European tongues before ever hear- 
 ing the sinister word 'syntax.') This nurse would 
 obviously be very useful on a French holiday. 
 Further, this nurse was a good creature, and it 
 would be a pleasure to give her pleasure, and she 
 could not fail to be delighted by the prospect of a 
 visit to her native land. Everything conspired. By 
 the time we reached the station we were practically, 
 in Mary's mind, already installed at Fontainebleau. 
 I acquiesced. It diverted me to see Mary feverish 
 and precipitate. At the station Johnnie telegraphed 
 to Fontainebleau. In six days we were at Fontaine- 
 bleau, together with our cutlery and other furnishings 
 of a furnished house. 
 
 It seemed a large mysterious house, from the 
 street. To the left of the double-portals the brass
 
 THE DISAPPEARANCE 337 
 
 and copper utensils of the kitchen gleamed through 
 a window. To the right was the dining-room ; on 
 the first floor a whole row of windows, and above 
 that a series of very picturesque red dormers. The 
 double-portals, richly carved, gave access to the 
 porte-cochere, a kind of tunnel cut through the house, 
 and at the other extremity of the tunnel was a 
 courtyard leading to a garden. The high wall of 
 the Palace itself shut in the garden on one side, 
 and on the other were tall yellowish-green and 
 bluish-green trees that curved upwards and formed 
 a canopy in the sky. From the garden, too, the 
 house seemed large, with dozens of varied windows. 
 And yet on examination it would only yield the 
 dining-room, a large bedroom over the dining-room 
 for Mary and the child, and some uncharted miles 
 of passages that ended occasionally in a cubicle or 
 so. There was no drawing-room, but there were 
 two odd tiny rooms that could only be reached from 
 the courtyard. One of these Mary denominated 
 the bathroom, for there was no bathroom and no 
 bath. Happily the bath-house was in the next 
 street. Edith's keenest joy was to see the bath 
 come along the street, in a pony-cart, surrounded 
 by copper pails full of hot water. Never before had 
 Edith seen a bath in motion. Between us we must 
 have taxed the resources of the bath-house to the 
 utmost. The bath-man in his striped apron seemed 
 
 z
 
 338 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 to be eternally crossing our courtyard with a copper 
 bucket at the end of one arm, and the other arm 
 sticking out horizontally in the air. And the cost 
 was ruinous. Mary was even more childlike than 
 Edith. She found the house perfect, and each new 
 discovery of inconveniences was a joy. Within a 
 week we felt as though we had been living in that 
 house through ages of endless summer. Johnnie 
 Hulse visited the town in order, as it was said, to 
 satisfy himself that we had fallen on our feet. He 
 was now openly and obviously in love with Mary. 
 He stayed three days, and ate every meal with us, 
 and then without any warning to me he departed. I 
 knew not what had passed between him and Mary, 
 but I knew that something had passed. So far as 
 I was aware, he did not write to her, nor she to 
 him. 
 
 Now on this morning, which was a Sunday, the 
 linen-clad postman gave me one letter only — not 
 even a newspaper — and the letter was addressed to 
 Mary in Johnnie Hulse's hand. I sent it upstairs 
 on her coffee-tray. And then, after I had had my 
 coffee in the garden, I started for my walk about 
 the town. 
 
 In the Rue Grande black-aproned girls were 
 arranging picture postcards, toys, pens, crockery, 
 carvings, glass — all kinds of worthless souvenirs of 
 the pleasure-city — on benches in front of the big
 
 THE DISAPPEARANCE 339 
 
 shops ; soldiers were hurrying to and fro on errands ; 
 an immense dustcart with its bell and shoutings 
 passed from door to door ; the newspaper tram 
 jolted along full of newspapers as fresh as fruit ; 
 a few people emerged from the church, whose 
 bell was ringing. The sun was slanting strongly 
 upon the early and fresh calmness of the town, 
 to change the confused opalescent colouring of 
 its vistas into crude whites and yellows under a 
 deep blue sky. The day announced itself as torrid 
 and windless. And the workers were already 
 shrinking from its menace. Awnings began to 
 flutter out everywhere like bunting. I crossed the 
 town and dived into the thick encircling forest. The 
 letter occupied my thoughts. It was as if I still 
 carried it in my pocket. My impression had been 
 that Johnnie Hulse and Mary had passed through 
 a more or less emotional interview at which she 
 had enjoined him to leave her and not to write. 
 For if he had not been advised or commanded to 
 refrain from writing, he would assuredly have written 
 earlier. But I could only guess. Between Mary 
 and me, Johnnie had scarcely been referred to. 
 Each of us was afraid of the sound of his name. 
 And the silence concerning him was ominous of 
 dramatic events passing in secret, hidden from me. 
 The letter exasperated my curiosity. 
 
 When I returned through the town the Rue
 
 340 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 Grande had awakened into full activity. The black- 
 aproned girls were standing at attention before the 
 wares of their masters. Brakes loaded with bright 
 frocks rattled heavily about. The electric cars 
 threaded past each other at the loops. From the 
 open doors of the church came the distant gleam 
 of stained glass and the sound of an organ. High 
 Mass was in process. And everywhere in the streets 
 the ground spaces were divided into sharply con- 
 trasting areas of glaring shine and dark shadow. 
 At our double portals in the secluded Rue d'Avon 
 Mary and Edith, dressed with superlative elaboration, 
 each under a sunshade, and seeming to be inordi- 
 nately typical of the British race, stood waiting. 
 It was for me that they were waiting. 
 
 We had been advised that High Mass at the 
 Church of St. Louis in the height of the season 
 was a 'sight,' a spectacle comprising a collection 
 of elegances and absurdities from Paris and else- 
 where that was worthy to be seen by Britons. 
 And on the previous evening it had been arranged 
 that we should assist at the sortie. 
 
 There was self-consciousness in Mary's glance. 
 
 " So you are going ? " I said. 
 
 " Of course," said Mary, rather curtly, as though 
 my idea that anything could have occurred to alter 
 her mind was offensive to her. " We shall be late." 
 
 " Oh no ! " I said. " It's only a quarter to eleven,
 
 THE DISAPPEARANCE 341 
 
 and it won't be over till eleven. A quarter of an 
 hour of it will be all you'll need." 
 
 During the brief stroll to the church, not a word 
 from Mary as to the letter! Nevertheless the fact 
 of the letter was written all over her face, and it 
 came out also in all the tones of her voice. Edith 
 detected the unusual, absorbed it and reproduced it. 
 
 The church was full nearly to the doors. Across 
 a long perspective of heads and diminishing arches 
 we saw a resplendent enclosure in which brocaded 
 figures attitudinised in ritual before a lofty altar 
 upon which garishly tinted windows threw shades 
 of colour. A bell rang in the distance occasionally, 
 and an organ sounded brokenly from somewhere, or 
 vague voices echoed in the hushed spaces of the 
 interior. In front of us stood an enormous hatted 
 and uniformed beadle with a mighty staff. An 
 expectant silence, and then the beadle imperiously 
 crashed his staff on the stone floor and every head 
 was bent in obedience to the signal. The bell rang 
 distantly. I looked around in search of the ele- 
 gances, and saw none. The congregation was diverse, 
 and in a coiner were the white wings of nuns' caps 
 picturesquely floating over the grey frocks of an 
 orphanage ; but I could discern no exaggeration of 
 fashion. Then a woman swept into the church, 
 followed by a little collared boy and a stoutish man 
 with a rosette in his button-hole. Here was fashion!
 
 342 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 The dark hat, the waist-line, the fall of the pale 
 skirt, the cosmetics, spoke it. Every contour spoke 
 it. The woman went as in trance to the vessel of 
 holy water, dipped her finger, touched with her 
 wet finger the finger of the boy, and simultaneously 
 they made on themselves the sign of the cross. The 
 gesture was accomplished with the swift absent- 
 minded perfunctoriness that only comes of years 
 and years of use. She was a little hot, and she 
 glanced frowningly at her husband, who stood apart. 
 She was extravagantly Parisian. She might have 
 come down from Paris in a bandbox opened only 
 at the church door. She was worth at least a 
 hundred pounds as she stood. She put her lorgnon 
 to her eyes so conscious of perfection and stared 
 haughtily a moment at the mysteries of the altar. 
 Then with a whispered word to her husband and 
 a tug at her child's hand, she was off again, having 
 shrivelled everybody within range of the disdain of 
 those hard eyes. She was off again, in her pilgrimage 
 through eternity. I alone perhaps knew where she 
 was going, and to what glories she would rise when 
 she had escaped from the grotesqueness of her 
 prison. Mary lifted her eyebrows to me scarcely 
 perceptibly, to indicate her opinion that after that 
 our visit to the Mass could not be deemed vain. 
 
 " Where is Edith ? " she murmured suddenly. 
 
 Behind us was a little postern, showing the
 
 THE DISAPPEARANCE 343 
 
 lower steps of a winding stair. The person least 
 experienced in Edith would have known that the 
 stair had tempted her too strongly. I climbed the 
 stair, and came out at the top upon a gallery where 
 a young woman in a white blouse was blowing an 
 organ, and perspiring, and where a number of little 
 boys in black pinafores and belts sat uncomfortably 
 on benches. The secret machinery of the temple's 
 rite ! Edith was there also, ready to go up even 
 higher, had she not seen me. She offered her hand 
 in token of contrition, and we remained a few 
 moments looking down from the upper masonry of 
 the structure at the parterre of hats and the genu- 
 flecting priests and acolytes in the far distance. 
 
 When we reached the ground, we both saw 
 Johnnie Hulse by the side of Mary, who was 
 whispering to him, apparently angry, certainly 
 angry. He had a motorist's peaked cap in his 
 hand. She ceased to speak as she saw us. There 
 was a new silence in the church. Johnnie shook 
 hands with me silently, and he smiled at Edith, 
 whose face was moveless. We could not converse 
 at the crisis of the Mass. The drama of our lives 
 seemed to hesitate while the rite of the temple was 
 being fulfilled, and we seemed to be awaiting in fear 
 its resumption. 
 
 My foreboding, then, was justified. The letter 
 had warned Mary of Johnnie's coming, and she had
 
 344 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 ignored it. He must have arrived at the house soon 
 after our departure, and followed us. 
 
 The service was over, and we passed out from the 
 cool darkness into the bright furnace of the street. 
 Opposite, the black-aproned girls were striving by 
 their charm to sell postcards, and views of the Palace 
 painted on irregular slices of wood from which the 
 bark had not been removed. A small orchestra was 
 playing dances at a cafe\ The pavements were 
 everywhere busy, and the sun was the aversion of 
 all eyes. The season of Fontainebleau was at full. 
 We were under an obligation, it appeared, to go 
 into the neighbouring confectioner's. After High 
 Mass no visitor who respected himself could omit 
 to eat a brioche or a cake at the confectioner's. The 
 shop, odorous with fresh pastry, was already full of 
 women and men that had settled on its contents like 
 locusts. The confectioner, in her virgin apron with 
 its artificial waist-line that curved downwards below 
 the umbilical region, sat on a throne trusting to the 
 honesty of religionists. Mary did not speak, and 
 even Edith was languid concerning cakes. Johnnie 
 and I had to make conversation. 
 
 " You're coming to lunch, of course," I said. 
 
 " No, I can't." 
 
 "Oh! But look here!" I protested. "That's 
 absurd. What are you here for ? " 
 
 I glanced at Mary. No relenting sign from her !
 
 THE DISAPPEARANCE 345 
 
 " Really, old chap, I can't stay for lunch ! " said 
 Johnnie awkwardly. 
 
 I thought that Mary was achieving rudeness. It 
 was incredible that she should not second my invita- 
 tion. Nevertheless she maintained her silence, save 
 to Edith. When we got out of the shop, the con- 
 gregation from the church had entirely vanished, so 
 that in our emotional disturbance we had missed 
 seeing the piquancies of it. 
 
 " Well, good-morning," said Johnnie queerly, and 
 held out his hand to Mary. 
 
 " Good-morning," she responded, with a grim 
 compression of the lips. 
 
 I made no further attempt to pierce the mystery 
 of Johnnie's arrival and of his departure. I decided 
 to pretend that I perceived nothing extraordinary 
 in his sudden apparition, Mary's icy resentment, his 
 refusal of my hospitality, and the curt leave-taking. 
 He quitted us, and no one mentioned him afterwards. 
 We lunched, for the benefit of the servants, and Mary 
 and I kept up a conversation the sole end of which 
 was to convince each other by suavity of tone that 
 our mutual sympathy was not merely unimpaired 
 but strengthened. 
 
 After lunch Edith was put to bed as usual, and I 
 also went to my bedroom on the second floor. It 
 was not an afternoon for exertion either physical or 
 mental. I slept rather heavily, without meaning or
 
 346 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 hoping to do so. When I awoke — with only one 
 idea in my head, the idea of tea — I wandered about 
 the ground-floor of the house, the courtyard, and the 
 garden, which was now beginning to be shadowed. 
 I wished, as I often wished, to negotiate with Mary 
 for an immediate tea. The cook, an arrangement of 
 blue and red, emerged informally from her echoing 
 kitchen to enquire into my uneasiness. 
 
 " Is madame in her bedroom ? " I asked. 
 
 " Madame is gone out. With a gentleman in an 
 automobile. Did not monsieur know?" 
 
 " When will she return ? " 
 
 " Madame said nothing." 
 
 "You would be very amiable to make tea at 
 once," I retorted to this blow. 
 
 Edith and I had tea, in the garden.
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 
 AT DARK 
 
 "Mother has gone with Captain Hulse," Edith 
 remarked suddenly. 
 
 " Did she tell you ? " 
 
 ♦'No, uncle." 
 
 That was all the child said. She was not like a 
 child now. She had not the expression of a child, 
 nor the gestures. She ate and drank like a woman. 
 She suffered, and her suffering was translated into an 
 exaggerated precision and carefulness of movement. 
 She suffered without understanding. Jealousy was 
 her affliction ; jealousy of Hulse, whom she liked. 
 She could have explained nothing, perhaps ; but 
 she could feel, and she could fear. She was 
 wounded. 
 
 "We can't be expected to stop in all the after- 
 noon because mother has run away," I said. " Sup- 
 pose we go for a walk round by the Palace, just you 
 and I?" 
 
 She assented, with an air as if to say that if her 
 mother chose to be independent she also must be 
 
 347
 
 348 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 independent : a little revolt in her. She stood passive 
 like an idol, under the great porch, while her nurse, 
 kneeling, smoothed out creases in the gossamer white 
 frock and straightened the stockings. We strolled 
 slowly through the shade of vast courtyards and past 
 the innumerable windows of fagades that were a 
 rampart against the sun, and under archways and 
 tunnels with long glimpses of flowered gardens and 
 water shaking in the heavy sunshine. There were 
 crowds of people. The monument of centuries of 
 desire for ever thwarting itself, the relic of futile and 
 tragic self-aggrandisement, was so wonderful and 
 prodigious that it drew the curious from the five 
 quarters of the world. It was so immense, so per- 
 manent, that it defied even the strong descendants 
 of its victims to rise and destroy it. It imposed. 
 Impossible to believe, in face of that pile the bricks 
 of whose gigantic chimneys alone would have built a 
 town for philosophers, that desire was woe and self- 
 aggrandisement a stupidity ! The error persisted. 
 
 I thought of the generations of occupants of that 
 chateau whose fate it had been to illustrate supremely 
 the unnatural folly of egotism for the instruction of 
 generations that would not yet be born for hundreds 
 of years. A fate surely deserving sympathy ! And, 
 wondering where in that particular moment they 
 were, in what condition, in what captivity or freedom, 
 I spent on them my sympathy. And there was the
 
 AT DARK 349 
 
 primly trotting child, in her fragile and spotless 
 frock, fresh from the freedom of another plane, newly 
 imprisoned in the old error, the prey of her own 
 egoism ; silently and proudly fretting because she 
 could not monopolise the fellow-creature, her mother ! 
 And I could offer no enlightenment to the child ; to 
 enlighten would be a hopeless enterprise. But I 
 could visit her invisible radiance with my soothing 
 thoughts. 
 
 As, on our return, we struck into the Rue d'Avon, 
 we tried to reassure one another. 
 
 " Mother's certain to be back by this time." 
 
 "Yes. Long ago. She'll think we've got lost 
 ourselves." 
 
 But we were neither of us as sure as our 
 words. We were afraid that Mary might still be 
 away. And our apprehension was justified. We 
 resumed our pretence of tranquillity. I, personally, 
 was in no way alarmed for Mary's safety. I knew 
 that she must be with Johnnie Hulse, and that 
 Johnnie had control of an automobile. But I pre- 
 saged no accident nor contretemps. What bit me 
 was sheer curiosity. What baffled me was my 
 perfect inability to explain to myself my sister's 
 vagary. When the hour of Edith's bedtime came, 
 we agreed that she should stay up for dinner and 
 that if after dinner her mother had not arrived she 
 should go to bed. She went to bed at half-past
 
 3So THE GLIMPSE 
 
 eight, still very silent, and contemptuous of her 
 nurse's facile comfortings. I was now conscious of 
 a certain alarm. Could there after all have been an 
 accident? The household was deeply perturbed 
 within itself. I went out into the town, to look for 
 the face of Johnnie Hulse over a steering-wheel. I 
 enquired for him at the hotel where he had pre- 
 viously stayed. Nothing was known there. I walked 
 up and down the Rue Grande in the dusk. The 
 flagons of the apothecaries threw reds and greens 
 across the tramlines, and the trams passed like cages 
 of light. Outside the restaurants and cafes satisfied 
 diners were smoking and drinking. The same 
 dances were being played in the large cafe at the 
 corner, and next to it, in front of the big shops, 
 the black-aproned girls, interestingly pallid and 
 languorous after thirteen hours of burning pavement, 
 were still by solicitation disposing of souvenirs. I 
 returned home again. 
 
 " Has madame come ? " 
 
 " No, monsieur." 
 
 " You can go to bed." 
 
 I sat in the garden under the waving plumes of 
 an acacia and watched the onset of night until the 
 garden-front of the house was black save for the 
 glimmer where Edith lay. No sound, except the 
 mysterious brushing of the unseen acacia against 
 the high wall ! Trees and sky were mingled in a
 
 AT DARK 351 
 
 violet gloom. I pondered upon the past and upon 
 the future. Then, startling, the loud irregular clang 
 of the big bell ! I sprang up. It was she, at last ! 
 I should know what had occurred to her ! I hurried 
 towards the house. But there were steps before 
 mine in the blackness of the porte-cochere. The 
 servants also had kept vigil. I heard Mary's voice 
 anxious and hurried : a question about Edith ; then 
 another about me. A lamp was brought from the 
 kitchen. She saw me. 
 
 " That you, Mary ? " I cried, halting. 
 
 She came out to me. I sat down in the cane 
 armchair which I had just left. She took another 
 similar chair. There was an iron garden-table between 
 us. She leaned back in the chair, tapping with her 
 hands on its arms nervously. I could not see her 
 features at all clearly. What I saw was a pale oval, 
 with the drapery of a thin white veil about it, and 
 below that a vague bodily form. A light moved 
 under the porte-cochere, and the servants murmured 
 to each other. Then silence and darkness away 
 there in the house ! 
 
 " Morrice ! " Mary said. u I'm engaged to be 
 married again." 
 
 My heart seemed to have received a dizzying blow. 
 Yet I could not have been surprised. It was, really, 
 what I had been expecting. 
 
 " I congratulate you, child," I said.
 
 352 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " I'm very sorry it's happened now," she went on. 
 " I am, truly ! " 
 
 " But why on earth should you be sorry ? " 
 
 "You know what I mean," she said firmly, as if 
 warning me against the unnecessary trouble of 
 making pretences. " So soon after Inez' death ! 
 Less than a month ! Morrice, I've often thought 
 I'd like to tell you, but somehow I've never been 
 
 able to — and I can, to-night ! We'd none of us 
 
 any idea how much you two were to each other." 
 
 I said nothing. Nobody knew the circumstances 
 which had led up to Inez' death. The doctor alone 
 was aware that my seizure had been the result of a 
 quarrel with Inez, and the doctor was the very grave 
 of secrets. The priest knew, of course ; but the priest 
 could not be counted among mankind. The rest of 
 the world undoubtedly thought that Inez had killed 
 herself from pure grief at my death. . . . Even 
 Johnnie probably assumed that grief had entered 
 largely into her motive. ... In discussing the death 
 with Mary, if ever they had discussed it, he had 
 probably been in a position to agree sincerely with 
 Mary's proposition that Morrice and Inez had cared 
 a great deal more for one another than their friends 
 suspected. . . . Yet he must have had strange, 
 strange feelings when the subject of Inez came up 
 between him and Mary ! 
 
 " Morrice, I'm frightfully sorry for you ; and
 
 AT DARK 353 
 
 I'm ashamed of letting myself be engaged now. 
 But " 
 
 " I know how you feel," I interrupted her. " But 
 it's quite wrong. How can your happiness make me 
 unhappy ? You're thinking conventionally, my child ; 
 that's what you're doing." 
 
 " I may be," she said. " I daresay I am. But I 
 can't help it. And I couldn't help getting engaged, 
 either. He's too strong for me ! " She sighed. 
 
 "Who? Johnnie?" 
 
 "Yes. He's much too strong for me. There 
 can't be many more men like him in the world. I 
 never thought anyone would bear me down when 
 I'd made up my mind. And I positively had made 
 up my mind that nothing should happen between us 
 two for at least three months. But he's borne me 
 down. Did you hear him come this afternoon ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Well ! " She gave a short laugh. " I had to go 
 out with him, or I don't know what wouldn't have 
 happened." 
 
 " Where have you been to ? " 
 
 I could dimly discern her head shaking. " / 
 don't know," she murmured in a fatigued voice. 
 " I don't know ! In the forest. Everywhere ! 
 Morrice, I'm broken ! I'm crushed and there's no 
 fight left in me." She laughed again. 
 
 " You went off in his car ? " 
 
 2 A
 
 354 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And where is he now, may one ask ? " 
 
 " He's gone back to Paris. We shan't see him 
 till we get to England again. I did insist on that, 
 anyway." Her tone showed a little triumph. 
 
 " Why ? " 
 
 " Well," she said, " I did ! That's all. I had to 
 have my own way in something. You'll never know 
 all we've been through this mortal day," she con- 
 tinued, fanning herself with a handkerchief. " No- 
 body ever will. Unless some time or other Johnnie 
 takes it into his head to tell you." 
 
 " There's only one thing I want to know," I said. 
 "Is it all rig**?" 
 
 " Oh ! Morrice ! " She sighed. « Don't ask me ! 
 I'm too happy ! So is he, I do believe ! " 
 
 The simple gushing candour of the outburst was 
 girlish, quite startlingly so in a woman of Mary's 
 age, experience, and temperament. Never had I 
 heard such passionate tones from her lips. 
 
 " Give me your hand, then, child," I said. I too 
 was unwontedly moved. 
 
 My hand groped for hers. 
 
 " Nothing will be said to anybody else for at 
 least three months," said Mary. "That's most 
 clearly understood. It's all very well to talk about 
 convention. There's got to be some conventionality, 
 for the benefit of the world."
 
 AT DARK 355 
 
 (Where, I thought, was the ironic Mary ?) 
 
 " What about the kid, then ? " I asked. 
 
 Mary paused. " I've thought of that. I thought 
 — supposing you were to give her an idea ? " 
 
 The mother abruptly turned her head. The 
 steady night-light faintly illuminated the window of 
 the bedroom. 
 
 " I must go and look at her. Give me your 
 matches, will you ? " 
 
 I remained alone in the garden, with the trees 
 softly swishing their branches against the high wall. 
 I was aware of a considerable agitation within myself. 
 The thing, then, was done. Do you surmise what 
 I could hear in the heavy silence of the night ? I 
 could hear the cajoling voice of Johnnie Hulse 
 saying to my wife : ' Will she be at Brondesbury 
 to-morrow at three ? ' and Inez reply : ' Yes.' 
 Little more than a month ago, that rendezvous that 
 destiny had interfered with ! And now she was 
 dead. And he was betrothed to another woman ! 
 The certainty that none but himself knew of his 
 interrupted intrigue with Inez had strengthened the 
 temptation to which Mary's passion had subjected 
 him. The intrigue with Inez had been an error, an 
 idle and vicious caprice. He had recognised that, 
 I felt, before her death. He had regretted it. 
 Destiny, in cutting it short, had been very kind to 
 him, had made possible for him a finer and honester
 
 356 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 future. Was I to be unkind where destiny had 
 smiled ? Was I to punish where destiny had for- 
 given ? Was I even privately to resent ? Was I 
 not to be loyal to the secret ? Johnnie and Mary 
 were caught together in the spell of a tremendous 
 enchantment. It had followed Mary, and it had 
 forced him after her, to overtake her ; they were its 
 victims. No more than to Edith would enlighten- 
 ment have been possible to them. They demanded 
 and needed naught but sympathy. What a marriage ! 
 John Hulse as a step-father ! The obdurate Mary 
 striving to mould herself to the shape of John Hulse ! 
 And Johnnie, accustomed to the softness of volup- 
 tuous acquiescences in women, schooling himself to 
 acknowledge the refusing moral independence of an 
 equal ! A marriage exceedingly perilous, that might 
 develop as well into a disaster as into a miraculous 
 good fortune. They must accept the danger. They 
 and their friends must face it. They could not deny 
 fate. I would not have had them deny fate. I 
 respected too highly the qualities of power and 
 intellectual sincerity in both of them, to lack faith 
 for them and in them. I had indeed a sure faith 
 that this ephemeral episode of their union, point of 
 fleeting contact between the eternities that lay behind 
 and those that lay in front, would not cause them too 
 much regret when they looked down on it from 
 freedom. The desire which was to unite them
 
 AT DARK 357 
 
 would daily provide its own antidote of discipline. 
 I understood them both deeply, past words. 
 
 A brighter illumination had now succeeded to 
 the night-light behind the open window where Edith 
 lay. I could hear the faintest far murmur of a voice. 
 Later, the light went out entirely.
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 THE ATTITUDE 
 
 JOHNNIE'S life seemed to be always agitated and 
 violent. We had scarcely had five days of quietude 
 after the upheavals and flights of the Sunday, when 
 word came that he was ill in bed. The envelope 
 was addressed to Mary in a strange hand, and within 
 were a few vague pencilled sentences written by 
 Johnnie himself. Mary was thrown into alarm, 
 chiefly by the significant fact that Johnnie had not 
 found energy to address his own envelope. The 
 illness must, then, be serious. Like most capable 
 women, Mary distrusted all nursing except her own. 
 She feared gravely for the bachelor at the mercy of 
 hirelings. In the course of the morning she departed 
 for Paris, to catch the afternoon boat-train for 
 England. She went alone. The matter was urgent ; 
 she must satisfy herself about Johnnie that very day. 
 She was regretting now that she had exiled him 
 from Fontainebleau. Why had she exiled him ? 
 She did not know. Nobody could discover a logical 
 
 358
 
 THE ATTITUDE 359 
 
 reason. Perhaps if she had not exiled him he would 
 not have fallen ill. 
 
 I was left in charge of Edith. This infinitely- 
 precious possession was confided to me : supreme 
 flattery. Mary did not think that it would be worth 
 while coming back. I was to conclude the tenancy 
 of the house and vacate it in order, and bring the 
 multifarious luggage, the French nurse, and Edith 
 safely to London. Mary's departure seemed to 
 happen in a moment, as her departure from London 
 had happened. Indeed, since her passion for Johnnie 
 had fully seized her, Mary was a different woman ; 
 often girlish, even infantile, and noticeably precipi- 
 tate in her actions. 
 
 The intimacy between Edith and me increased 
 greatly during the first twenty-four hours of Mary's 
 absence. Edith was sad ; but she made it clear by 
 gestures and tones that I was not held to blame for 
 her sadness. She desired to return home without 
 delay. I consented. In any event I should have 
 left within a week. We travelled to Paris, after 
 tremendous and intricate preparations, on a wet 
 afternoon. My intention was to pass the night 
 there and proceed to London the next day. 
 At the Hotel Meurice she and her nurse had 
 two rooms, communicating. It was the first time 
 that Edith had ever had the exclusive use of a 
 room. She received me in it, politely curbing
 
 360 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 her self-importance. She was much older than I 
 was. 
 
 "Uncle," she said, after cautiously shutting the 
 door leading to the other room. " Why should 
 mother go to Captain Hulse because he's ill, and 
 leave me here ? Supposing I was ill ? " 
 
 Evidently the question was over-ripe in her mind. 
 
 "Well," I replied. "You aren't ill. And you 
 mustn't be. Don't forget it's your mother's birthday 
 to-morrow. You must be well for that." 
 
 " Is it ? " she exclaimed. " When shall we get 
 home ? " 
 
 " Oh ! about six o'clock." 
 
 " To-morrow night ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And will mother be at home or will she be 
 with Captain Hulse?" 
 
 " I hope she'll be at home. I'm going to write 
 this minute. But if Captain Hulse was very ill " 
 
 " You mean she won't be at home." 
 
 I had not definitely promised Mary to give Edith 
 an ' idea ' of what was in store for her, but I had not 
 refused to do so. If the thing was to be done it 
 ought to be done before she saw her mother again, 
 and time was short now. 
 
 " Suppose," I blurted out, " suppose your mother 
 were to decide that it would be nice for you to have 
 a new father, and — it was Captain Hulse ? You do
 
 THE ATTITUDE 361 
 
 like him, you know. And he's a great friend of 
 mine. I say, suppose she were to decide." 
 
 She gazed at me in silence. She asked for no 
 further light. She put no babyish questions. Then 
 the curves of her lip began to change ; her eyes 
 filled, and she burst into sobbing. The nurse opened 
 the door from the other room. I waved the woman 
 away, and took Edith in my arms and sat down with 
 her. She was certainly the victim of the circum- 
 stances of this affair. Johnnie was to be introduced 
 into her home ; he was to be forcibly thrust upon 
 her, upsetting the delicate balance of her existence. 
 It was she who would have to adjust herself. For 
 years and years she would be compelled to suffer the 
 influences of Johnnie's violent individuality. They 
 might be good for her ; they would assuredly be 
 stimulative. But that was not the point. The point 
 was that she had no choice in the matter. Various 
 risks threatened her. At best she was to lose the 
 monopoly of her mother. And she could only 
 submit. 
 
 I tried to comfort her. Then I said : 
 
 " Come ! If you go on like this, what will your 
 mother do ? " 
 
 " Let me get my handkerchief," she said, and slid 
 down. "I'm not crying about — about that. I'm 
 very glad — about that." She wiped her eyes, sobbing 
 occasionally. " I'm only crying because it's mother's
 
 362 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 birthday to-morrow and I shan't see her till night, 
 and perhaps I shan't see her at all. And I want to 
 see her in the morning." 
 
 I quite believed that she had persuaded herself 
 that herein was the sole cause of her grief. 
 
 " Pity, isn't it ? " I said. " But I can promise you 
 you shall see her when we get to London." 
 
 " Can't we go to-night ? When's the next 
 train ? " 
 
 " It's not like going to Harrow," I said. " There 
 aren't trains every half-hour." 
 
 " Aren't there ? " 
 
 " No ! And the afternoon train's gone." 
 
 " When's the next ? " 
 
 " The next is the night train. You'd be travel- 
 ling all night ! " 
 
 " But when should we get to London ? " 
 
 " Before six o'clock in the morning." 
 
 " Oh ! Uncle ! " she exclaimed, enraptured ; an 
 appeal in her eyes. 
 
 I had engaged the rooms at the hotel, and I was 
 aware that Mary would not have countenanced the 
 wild project of a night-journey for Edith. But I 
 would not check that fine impulse of Edith's towards 
 her mother ; I could appreciate her subtle distinction 
 between greeting her mother in the fresh morning of 
 her mother's birthday, and greeting her only at its 
 close.
 
 THE ATTITUDE 363 
 
 Thus at daybreak we were nearing England. 
 The voyage had begun in fair weather and was 
 ending as a storm rose ; but Edith, wrapped from 
 head to foot in a rug, slept on a bench. The boat 
 swirled on a heaving slaty sea in the dusk. In the 
 corners of the sky hung a few expiring stars that the 
 ragged clouds had not covered away. And there 
 were the pale cliffs, jutting pitifully up out of the 
 menacing Atlantic. The boat approached them with 
 rebellious bows that lifted and fell and swerved and 
 were constantly corrected by the watchful rudder. 
 The lantern on her mast was as weak as the stars. 
 From the cliffs there ran out a thin dark reef, finished 
 with another expiring light, and we ran towards this 
 reef. One felt that it was indeed an island which 
 we were nearing ; scarcely even an island, but some- 
 thing insecurely anchored amid the eternal threaten- 
 ings of the ocean, something round which the tempests 
 were never still. We sidled perilously up to the reef 
 — a tongue of stone and wood pushed forth audaciously 
 into the sea to save us. A cord, a mere cord, was 
 thrown to us, and we clung to the shaking reef. The 
 island had offered us such shelter as it could. 
 Islanders came aboard to enhearten us in the windy 
 and fatigued dawn. I picked up Edith and, the 
 nurse following, carried her across a plank, and along 
 the narrow soaking reef, balancing amid gusts. And 
 islanders with fragments of white chalk put rough
 
 364 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 mystical marks upon our goods so that we might 
 pass. Behind a small oblong aperture a wan girl 
 with fluffy hair stood at a tiny counter to offer us 
 beer in thick glasses, and tea and coffee in cups of 
 granite, and hunks of bread. It was the gate of an 
 empire. It was the welcome of the greatest empire. 
 I yawned and smiled and yawned. I too was an 
 islander. 
 
 And when we rolled across the floor of roofs into 
 a London that was not yet awake, I still had the 
 sensation of being on an island insecurely anchored 
 in a great sea. We were all huddled together on 
 that bit of turf that raised its breast from the sea to 
 encounter the winds ; and we were doing what we 
 could ; and we called the episode life. We called 
 it life, this recurring moment of captivity between 
 vast freedoms. . . . Differences of class, of lot, — what 
 were they in the immense perspective ? We were 
 all one. The eager acuteness of my sympathetic 
 understanding quickened my blood and made me 
 forget fatigue. Mary was at the station. She had 
 been up all night, but Johnnie was better. She 
 expressed surprise at my vigour. I watched the 
 meeting of mother and child with joy. I compre- 
 hended them, in all the secret folds of their emotion. 
 I succeeded in that because I wanted to succeed, 
 because my joy was to pour myself into them and 
 spiritually coalesce with them. I did not know
 
 THE ATTITUDE 365 
 
 what my activities would be during the remaining 
 years of the episode, but I knew that by an 
 intense and continual cultivation of this attitude 
 towards all my fellows, I should avoid unhappiness. 
 In such preparation I could possess myself in 
 peace until the prison broke once more. Nothing 
 else, beside the perfecting of this attitude, had 
 importance. I was alone. But I had seen God. 
 
 THE END 
 
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