All that she said added something to life, it seemed, like poetry which, he remembered, 'enriches the blood of the world.' The selections were not idle, due to chance, but belonged to some great Scheme, some fairy edifice she built out of the very stuff of her own life. Oh, how utterly he understood and knew her. The poison of intellectuality, thank heaven, was not in her, yet she created somehow; for all she touched, with word or thought or gesture, turned suddenly alive in a way he had never known before. The world turned beautiful and simple at her touch….
Even the commonest things! It was miraculous, at least in its effect upon himself. Her simplicity escaped all signs of wumbling. She had no favourite and particular Scheme for doing good, but did merely what was next her at the moment to be done. She was good. In her little person glowed a great enthusiasm for life. She created neighbours. And, as the grandeur of her insignificance rose before him, his own great Scheme for Disabled Thingumabobs that once had filled the heavens, shrank down into the size of a mere mouse-trap that would go into his pocket. In its place loomed up another that held the beauty of the Stars. How little, when announcing it to Minks weeks and weeks ago, had he dreamed the form it was to take!
And so, wrapped in this glory of the stars, he dreamed on in his corner, fashioning this marvellous interpretation of a woman he had never seen before, and never spoken with. It was all so different to ordinary falling in love at sight, that the phrase never once occurred to him. It was consummated in a moment—out there, beside the fountain when he saw her first, shadowy, with brilliant, peering eyes. It seemed perfect instantly, a recovery of something he had always known. And who shall challenge the accuracy of his vision, or call its sudden maturity impossible? For where one sees the surface only, another sees the potentialities below. To believe in these is to summon them into activity, just as to think the best of a person ever brings out that best. Are we not all potential splendours?
Swiftly, in a second, he reviewed the shining sentences that revealed her to him: The 'autumn flowers'—she lived, then, in the Present, without that waste of energy which is regret! In 'a little shell' lay the pattern of all life,—she saw the universe in herself and lived, thus, in the Whole! To be 'out' meant forgetting self; and life's climax is at every minute of the day—she understood, that is, the growth of the soul, due to acceptance of what every minute brings, however practical, dull, uninteresting. By recreating the commonest things, she found a star in each. And her world was made up of neighbours—for 'every letter that one writes begins with dear!'
The Pattern matured marvellously before his eyes; and its delicate embroideries, far out of sight, seemed the arabesques that yearnings, hitherto unfulfilled, had traced long long ago with the brush of tender thinking. Together, though at opposite ends of the world, these two had woven the great Net of sympathy, thought, and longing in which at last they both were prisoners … and with them all the earth.
The figure of Jane Anne loomed before him like an ogress suddenly.
'Cousinenry, will you answer or will you not? Daddy's already asked you twenty times at least!' Then, below her breath, as she bent over him, 'The Little Countess will think you awf'ly rude if you go to sleep and snore like this.'
He looked up. He felt a trifle dazed. For a moment he had forgotten where he was. How dark the room had grown! Only—he was sure he had not snored.
'I beg your pardon,' he stammered, 'but I was only thinking—how wonderful you—how wonderful it all is, isn't it? I was listening. I heard perfectly.'
'You were dozing,' whispered Monkey. 'Daddy wants the Countess to tell you how she knew the story long ago, or something. Ecoute un peu, man vieux!'