bracken. The horizon, low down between the trunks, shone gold and
crimson still, but fading rapidly. I stood there for a long time
trembling; I was a part of it; I felt that I was shining, as though my
inner joy irradiated the world about me. Nothing in all my life has been
so real, so positive. I was assuredly not alone. . . .

The first sharp magic, the flash that pierced and burned, had gone its
way, but Beauty still stood so perilously near, so personal, that any
moment, I felt, it must take tangible form, betray itself in visible
movement of some sort, break possibly into audible sound of actual
speech. It would not have surprised me--more, it would have been natural
almost--had I felt a touch upon my hands and lips, or caught the murmur
of spoken words against my ear.

Yet from such direct revelation I shrank involuntarily and by instinct.
I could not have borne it then. I had the feeling that it must mar and
defile a wonder already great enough; there would have lain in it, too,
a betrayal of the commonplace, as of something which I could not
possibly hold for true. I must have distrusted my own senses even, for
the beauty that cleft me open dealt directly with the soul alone,
leaving the senses wholly disengaged. The Presence was not answerable to
any lesser recognition.

Thus I shrank and turned away, facing the familiar garden and the "wet
bird-haunted English lawn," a spiritual tenderness in me still dreading
that I might see or hear or feel, destroying thus the reality of my
experience. Yet there was, thank God, no speech, no touch, no movement,
other than the shiver of the birches, the breath of air against my
cheek, the droop and bending of the nearer pine boughs. There was no
audible or visible expression; I saw no figure breast-high in the