She groped for pencil and paper and wrote, unaware that she was writing. It was as though a hand stronger than her own was laid upon hers. Her power seemed to come from some vast, fathomless source. The starved passions of all the starved ages poured through her in rhythmic torrent of words—words that flashed and leaped with the resistless fire of youth burning through generations of suppression.
Not until daylight filtered through the grating of her window did the writing cease, nor was she aware of any fatigue. An ethereal lightness, a sense of having escaped from the trammels of her body, lifted her as on wings. Her radiant face met the responsive glow of understanding that shone down on her from the wall. “It’s your light shining through me,” she exulted. “It’s your kind eyes looking into mine that made my dumbness speak.”
For the moment the contest was forgotten. She was seized by an irresistible impulse to take her outpourings to the man who had inspired her. “Let him only see what music he made of me.” Gathering tightly to her heart the scribbled sheets of paper, she hurried to the university.
A whole hour she waited at his office door. As she saw him coming, she could wait no longer, but ran towards him.
“Read it only,” she said, thrusting the manuscript at the bewildered man. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
“What exotic creature was this, with her scattered pages of scrawling script and eager eyes?” President Irvine wondered. He concluded she was one of the immigrant group before which he had lectured.
§ 4
She returned, to find the manuscript still in his hand.
“Tell me,” he asked with an enthusiasm new to him, “where did you get all this?”
“From the hunger in me. I was born to beat out the meaning of things out of my own heart.”