"I will understand it quickest by reading it," I said. "I take in a page at once—in your block letters."
But he preferred to read it out himself, so that he could note the effect upon me, he explained, of definite passages. He saw that I guessed his purpose, and we laughed together a moment. "When you tire of listening," he said, "just tell me and I'll pause." I gave him my hand to hold. "It helps me to stay here," I explained, and he nodded as he grasped me in his warm firm clasp.
"It's written by one who may have known you and your big rhythms, though I can't be sure," he added. "One of—er—my patients wrote it, someone who believed she was in communication with a kind of immense Nature-spirit."
Then he began to read in his clear, windy voice:
"'I sit and weave. I feel strange; as if I had so much consciousness that words cannot explain it. The failure of others makes my work more hard, but my own purposes never fail, I am associated with those who need me. The universal doors are open to me. I compass Creation.'"
But already I began to hum my songs, though to please him I kept the music low, and he, dear Fillery, did not bid me stop, but only tightened his grasp upon my hand. I listened with pleasure and satisfaction. Therefore I hummed.
"'I am silent, seeking no expression, needing no communication, satisfied with the life that is in me. I do not even wish to be known about——'"
"That's where your Race," I put in, "is to me as children. All they do must be shouted about so loud or they think it has not happened."
"'I do not wish to be forced to obtrude myself,'" he went on. "'There are hosts like me. We do not want that which does not belong to us. We do not want that hindrance, that opposition which rouses an undesirable consciousness; for without that opposition we could never have known of disobedience. We are formless. The formless is the real. That cannot die. It is eternal.'"
Again he tightened his grasp, and this time also laid his eyes a moment on my own, over the top of his paper, so that I kept my music back with a great effort. For it was hard not to express myself when my own came calling in this fashion.