I was led backwards, far down into my own being. I reached the earliest,
simplest functions by which I myself had come to be, the state where the
frontier lies between that which is dead and that which is alive.
Somewhere between the mineral and vegetable worlds, I knew, that
frontier lay. For the vegetable kingdom alone possesses the power of
converting the mineral or the chemical into the living organism by
absorption; and here, among the leaves and roots and flowers, that power
was sweetly, irresistibly, at work.

It seemed I reached that frontier, and I passed it. Beauty came through
the most primitive aspect of my being.

And so I would tell you, you alone of all the world, that the Presence
walking beside me in the scented darkness came suddenly so close that I
was aware of it in what seemed my earliest and most innocent state of
soul.

Beside me, in that old-world garden, walked the Cause of all things. The
Beauty that in you was truth, in Marion tenderness, was harvested: and
somebody was pleased.



XI

ALL this I have told to you because we have known together the closest
intimacy possible to human beings--we have shared beauty.

They said, these many days ago, that you had gone away, that you were
dead. The wind on the Downs, your favourite Downs, your favourite