creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. She told me
so, but I could not believe her. I was not in the sphere in which
such belief was to be attained to. Now it seems to me that love of
some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary
amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive
of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other,
and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of
sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other
way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the
full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body,
but pain for the beautiful soul.

When I say that I am convinced of these things I speak with too
much pride. Far off, like a perfect pearl, one can see the city of
God. It is so wonderful that it seems as if a child could reach it
in a summer's day. And so a child could. But with me and such as
me it is different. One can realise a thing in a single moment,
but one loses it in the long hours that follow with leaden feet.
It is so difficult to keep 'heights that the soul is competent to
gain.' We think in eternity, but we move slowly through time; and
how slowly time goes with us who lie in prison I need not tell
again, nor of the weariness and despair that creep back into one's
cell, and into the cell of one's heart, with such strange
insistence that one has, as it were, to garnish and sweep one's
house for their coming, as for an unwelcome guest, or a bitter
master, or a slave whose slave it is one's chance or choice to be.

And, though at present my friends may find it a hard thing to
believe, it is true none the less, that for them living in freedom
and idleness and comfort it is more easy to learn the lessons of