Was it a Power that could love
and be loved? Or was it only mechanical and soulless, a condition
of life, which one might dread and even abhor, but which could not
be trifled with?
Because that seemed the secret of all the happiness of life--the
meeting, with a sense of intimate security, something warm and
breathing, that had need of me as I of it, that could smile and
clasp, foster and pity, admire and adore, and in the embrace of
which one could feel one's hope and joy grow and stir by contact
and trust. That was what one found in the hearts about one's path;
and the wonder was, did some similar chance of embracing, clasping,
trusting, and loving that vaster Power await one in the dim spaces
beyond the fields and homes of earth?
I guessed that it was so, but saw, as in a faint vision, that many
harsh events, sorry mischances, blows and wounds and miseries,
hated and dreaded and endured, lay between me and that larger
Heart. But I perceived at last, with terror and mistrust, that the
adventure did indeed lie there; that I should often be disdained
and repulsed, untended and unheeded, bitterly disillusioned, shaken
out of ease and complacency, but assuredly folded to that greater
Heart at last.
5
And then there followed a different phase. Up to the very end of
the university period, the same uneasiness continued; then quite
suddenly the door opened, one slipped into the world, one found
one's place.
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