His reply was curiously illuminating:—
"Like some great guiding Thought within her mind—some flaming motif—interpreting her love and splendor—leading me straight."
"As you felt at Marseilles, a clue—a vital clue?" For I remembered the singular phrase he had used in the notebook.
"Not a bad word," he laughed; "certainly, as far as it goes, not a wrong one. For he—it—was at the same time within myself. We merged, as our life grew and spread. We swept things along with us from the banks. We were in flood together," he cried. "We drew the landscape with us!"
The last words baffled me; I found no immediate response. He pushed away the plates on the table before us, where we had been lunching in the back room of a dingy Soho restaurant. We now had the place to ourselves. He drew his chair a little nearer.
"Don't ye see—our journey also was within," he added abruptly.
The pale London sunlight came through the window across chimneys, dreary roofs, courtyards. Yet where it touched his face it seemed at once to shine. His voice was warm and eager. I caught from him, as it were, both heat and light.
"You moved actually, though, over country—?"
"While at the same time we moved within, advanced, sank deeper," he returned; "call it what you will. Our condition moved. There was this correspondence between the two. Over her face we walked, yet into her as well. We 'traveled' with One greater than ourselves, both caught and merged in her, in utter sympathy with one another as with herself…"
This stopped me dead. I could not pretend more than a vague sympathetic understanding with such descriptions of a mystical experience. Nor, it was clear, did he expect it of me. Even his own heart was troubled, and he knew he spoke of things that only few may deal with sanely, still fewer hear with patience.