And Rita knew well that she was hearing what many people would have given much to hear, knew that Lothian was exerting himself to a manifestation of the highest power of his brain—for her.
For her! It was an incredible triumph, wonderfully sweet. The dominant sex-instinct awoke. Unconsciously she was now responding to him as woman to man. Her eyes, her lips showed it, everything was quite different from what it had been before.
In all that happened afterwards, neither of them ever forgot that night. For the girl it was Illumination.
. . . She had mentioned a writer of beautiful prose whom she had recently discovered in the library and who had come as a revelation to her.
"Nothing else I have ever read produces the same impression," she said.
"There are very few writers in prose that can."
"It is magic."
"But to be understood. You see, some of his chapters—the passages on Leonardo da Vinci for instance, are intended to be musical compositions as it were, in which words have to take the place and perform the functions of notes. It has been pointed out that they are impassioned, not so much in the sense of expressing any very definite sentiment, but because, from the combination and structure of the sentences, they harmonise with certain phases of emotion."
She understood. The whole mechanism and intention of the writer were revealed to her in those lucent words.
And then a statement of his philosophy.