there were two very curious things that I observed or began to observe.

The first was that I could not really see into the girl's thought. I
became aware that though I could see into the thought of Amroth as
easily and directly as one can look into a clear sea-pool, with all its
rounded pebbles and its swaying fringes of seaweed, there was in the
girl's mind a centre of thought to which I was not admitted, a fortress
of personality into which I could not force my way. More than that. When
she mistrusted or suspected me, there came a kind of cloud out from the
central thought, as if a turbid stream were poured into the sea-pool,
which obscured her thoughts from me, though when she came to know me
and to trust me, as she did later, the cloud was gradually withdrawn;
and I perceived that there must be a perfect sacrifice of will, an
intention that the mind should lie open and unashamed before the thought
of one's friend and companion, before the vision can be complete. With
Amroth I desired to conceal nothing, and he had no concealment from me.
But with the girl it was different. There was something in her heart
that she hid from me, and by no effort could I penetrate it; and I saw
then that there is something at the centre of the soul which is our very
own, and into which God Himself cannot even look, unless we desire that
He should look; and even if we desire that He should look into our
souls, if there is any timidity or shame or shrinking about us, we
cannot open our souls to Him. I must speak about this later, when the
great and wonderful day came to me, when I beheld God and was beheld by
Him. But now, though when the girl trusted me I could see much of her
thought, the inmost cell of it was still hidden from me.

And then, too, I perceived another strange thing; that the landscape in
which we walked was very plain to me, but that she did not see the same
things that I saw. With me, the landscape was such as I had loved most