“At any rate,” he replied, “you resemble them in certain respects. You are at bottom only interested in what they would call the reality behind the flow of phenomena. You actually do live in constant touch with it, and find it exciting. Nothing else will ever quite give you satisfaction. It is a faculty which men of action lose. If they didn’t the flow of phenomena would cease.” She stripped the dark leaves one by one from a bamboo. “And what about men who record action and inaction with equal dispassion?” “Oh,” he answered, “they also sometimes get in touch with reality, in a mild way. But about Yuan. What does he tell you?” “He told me that when he has once thoroughly investigated the nature of objects, and understood the identity of all things, he will do as his great-grandfather wishes—abandon all desire, and wholly give himself up to what he calls the unnameable. But he will go much farther than his great-grandfather, he says. Already he is convinced of the ultimate unreality of the world. He wishes one day to leave the world of relativity, to contemplate Nature in its absolute aspect, and finally to sleep a white and dreamless sleep of the mind, knowing only what is beyond mind. This is what he said, and in this state he won’t know his nose from his mouth, and his flesh and bones will be dissolved, and he will drift with the wind, not knowing whether he is the wind itself or a leaf riding on it.” “In old age,” said Ambrose, “he will come down to the less picturesque and more human mysticism of his great-grandfather. But first he has, as you say, to put away desire.” “He often does, already,” she answered eagerly. “He fasts in heart. It is quite simple, apparently. You only forget there is a you, and when there’s no you it can’t have desires.” “Quite simple.” “He says it is the more subtle desires, the desires of the intellect, that trouble him.” “No doubt they do. And in other matters he is without passions?” “As far as I can see. Well—he’s not a neuter.” “He has the eye of a man?” She hesitated. “Of more than a man.” “It has expression in it—warmth, feeling, electricity?” “I don’t know. I cannot say what there is in his eyes. I can only say that they are not dead. They have looked straight at mysterious things, and they are unreadable. All his face is unreadable. He is like rocks and forests. His eyes are the mysterious presences that are among trees. And they slant beautifully.” “And what is your chief feeling about him?” “If only I could always think of him as a figure on a vase....” She smiled at Ambrose faintly, enigmatically, baffling further inquiry. Strange creature, she seemed to him, neither child nor woman—at any rate half-fairy. “I don’t dare look at him very close,” she concluded. “He’s so still, so different. If he came walking by now in a meditation I should shiver. Oh! listen, Ambrose. Someone really is coming!”