“All of this ... you must listen carefully, for you must understand. That is my single hope: that you will understand: and all that I am saying is the truth, weighed as a man of science weighs, beloved ... all of this was taking place in me not from the moment when I knew you, but long before. What the world promised seemed good. Faith, passion, beauty, joy, the comradeship of perfect understanding, love in peace and in its strife ... all this ... the dangers faced with more bitterness than hope, the hours when anger cleanses, the quiet ways through woods, the ceremonials of the sea, day ... night ... the secret dwelling within the body of the belovéd as in the heart of heaven: all this the world had to give, and all this I cherished and believed in. But of all this, the world as I knew it was unworthy. Every jot of it was a crass imperfection ironically giving birth to a dream. Men and women were but maimed bits of themselves. Passion and vision were shreds torn and drooping, not banners across the sky. “So I withdrew from the world, Mildred, the world’s splendor. That was before you came. How wonderfully, though I did not know, it was for your coming!” I could not read her smile. And yet it moved me, making me defensive not for me: for her. “I did not create for myself the image of a woman, and when I met you like a romantic confound that image with my eye’s. No, my withdrawal from the world of the world’s splendor was more terrible than that. For it was absolute. It was designless, and ruthless. It was, because it had to be. The world could not hold my desire of the world. Let the world therefore go!” ... “Dear,” I drew closer to her, “how could I have dreamed that there would be a morrow ... the morning when I knew you ... by whose light all that had gone, all that had been dreamed, was darkness?” What I had now to say no words of mine seemed great enough to bring. I was kneeling at her side. Again I took her hand ... again she let me. “Did I know deeply always that I would know you? And the long years of vigil, of abstinence, were they my need, a wiser than the knowledge of my mind, to prepare my house for you? I cannot say. I know too well what infinite ways we go beyond the shallow tracings of our mind, to doubt that this might be. And yet, Mildred, the morning of my finding you was bright only as could be morning to a man who had dwelt in perpetual Night, and who knew not there was such a thing as sun. Can you picture him amazed, seeing the unknown sun? seeing the crystal radiance of dew, seeing a sky that is not black and the young clouds about his head: seeing last of all his lamp that had been his sun, fade to a blot against the wide magnificence of morning.” I bent my head and pressed her hands against my brow once more. So, with eyes shut, I kneeled while the day dimmed, and heard the steadfast lifting of her breath, and felt her there, and knew not what I felt: so sweet, so near, so unbearably far she was.