Yet, somehow, it was the inactive, calm Maria who loomed up in his thoughts as the principal enchantress. Maria's apparent inactivity was a blind; she did not do very much in the sense of rushing helter-skelter after desirable things, but she obtained them nevertheless. She got in their way so that they ran into her--then she claimed them. She knew beforehand, as it were, the way they would take. She was always there when anything worth happening was about. And though she spoke so little--during a general conversation, for instance--she said so much. At the end of all the talk, it was always Maria who had said the important thing. Her "why" and "why not" that very afternoon were all that he remembered of the intricate and long discussion. It left the odd impression on his mind that talk, all the world over, said one thing only; that the millions of talkers on the teeming earth, eagerly chattering in many languages, said one and the same thing only. There _was_ only one thing to be said. That is--they were all trying to say it. Maria _had_ said it.... A whirring moth flew busily past the open window and vanished into the night. He thought of his own books; for writers, painters, preachers, musicians, these were trying to say it too. "If I could describe that moth exactly," he murmured to himself, "give the sensation of its flight, its unconscious attraction to the light, its plunge back into the darkness, its precise purpose in the universe, its marvellous aim and balance--its life, I could--er--" The thought broke off with a jagged end. With a leap then it went on again: "Touch reality," and he heard his own voice saying it. He had uttered it aloud. The sound had an odd effect upon him. He realised the uselessness of words. No words touched reality. To be known, reality had to be lived, experienced. Maria managed this in some extraordinary way. She had reality.... Time did not humbug her. Nor did space.... Goodness!