"It is only by dreaming that you can get close to the world," she said, "and hope to get at its meaning. People who are completely awake spend all their time in doing things that don't matter. You, for instance, daddy—you and your inspections and reviews. What does it all come to? Would this world be one whit the worse if you didn't do any of it? Yet perhaps I am wronging you, for, anyhow, you can go mooning about your garden for hours together. Let me see—where had I got to?"
Colonel Fanshawe was watching Elizabeth a little uneasily. This strange mood of hers was not new to him. Half a dozen times before he had known her go off into these dim rhapsodies, and they somewhat disconcerted him. He made an effort to bring her back into realms less shadowy.
"Where had you got to?" he asked. "Upon my word, my dear, I don't think you had got anywhere particular. Wouldn't it be well to begin that enormous tea of which you spoke?"
But the girl was fathoms deep in this queer reverie of speculation. She shook her head at him.
"No; you don't understand yet," she said. "One has to dream first before one can do any good while one is awake. Unless you call baking bread and milking cows doing good. You have to penetrate, penetrate. It is a kingdom with high walls round it, and I expect there are many gates. Perhaps we all have our own gates; perhaps mine is a gate made of music and yours is a garden-gate. Don't misunderstand me, daddy, or think I am talking nonsense, or think, again, that what I mean is religion, though I dare say there is a religion-gate as well. All I know is that you have to pass dreaming through one of the gates in order to get inside the kingdom. And when you do get inside you find that it isn't so much that you have got inside the kingdom as that the kingdom has got inside you. I know it must be so. Each of us, I expect, has to find himself, and when he has found himself.... Oh, God knows!"
She broke off, and instantly poured herself out a cup of tea.
"I am so hungry," she said, "and I had quite forgotten. While I eat and drink, daddy, you shall keep your promise and tell me what I mean. You said you knew. Or have I been talking the most dreadful rubbish? But, if so, I am rubbish myself, for what I have said is Me."
Colonel Fanshawe lit a cigarette.
"No, my dear, you haven't been talking rubbish," he said. "But if I had said exactly the same it would have been rubbish." He meditated a moment or two, for, though he felt what he wanted to say, it was rather difficult for him to find the words for it. At the same time also there was that in what Elizabeth had said which strangely moved him; it recalled to him in this sunny afternoon of life something of what he had felt when he brought home, worshipping and loving, Elizabeth's mother.
"You have talked admirable sense, dear," he said, "for the very simple reason that you are eighteen. But it would be rubbish in my mouth at forty-eight. You feel that you are surrounded by delicious mysteries, into the heart of which you mean to penetrate. You can do it too, and I so earnestly hope you will. While you are yet young you can fall in love."