"Think of me always as happy," he said, "and think of me as of a man who is waiting in an antechamber, waiting to be summoned to a great Presence. At least that is how I feel myself, how strongly and certainly I cannot explain to you. Here am I in this beautiful and wonderful antechamber, the world which I love so, in which I have passed days and months of such extraordinary happiness. But at one end of the antechamber there is a curtain drawn, and behind that is the Presence. Soon I think it will be drawn back and I shall see what is behind it. I think it will be drawn soon, for--all this imagery is so clumsy for what is so simple--for lately the curtain has been stirred, so it seems to me, from the other side: it has been jerked so that often I have thought that each moment it was to be drawn away, whereas till lately it has always hung in heavy, motionless folds. And I am waiting in front of it, conscious still--oh, so fully conscious--of all the beautiful things I have loved, but looking at them no longer, for I can look nowhere but at the curtain which stirs and is twitched as if someone is on the point of drawing it back." He paused a moment, but did not take his eyes off Philip, but continued looking at him very gravely, very affectionately. "Of course I cannot help guessing what lies behind," he said, "and conjecturing and reasoning. It may be several things; at least it may appear under several forms, but of this I am certain, that it is God. And will there be a blinding flash of joy, which shows me that even the sorrow and the death which is everywhere is no less part of perfection than the joy and the life? Even now, as you know, in my puny little attempts to be happy in the way that Nature is happy, youth has come back to me in some extraordinary manner, and when I see what I shall see, will immortal life, lived here and now, be my portion? I don't know; I think it quite possible. And if that is so, if that is the initiation--ah, my God! that impulse of joy which I shall receive will spread from me like the circles in a pool when a stone is thrown into it." He paused again, his smooth brown hands trembling a little.