"Am I tiring you?"
"Not a bit. Besides, it is business. I came in here to get a catalogue raisonné.—It's rather curious that you should have such a passion for minerals and species and prehistoric things."
"Is it? Well, I have it," said Hagar. She put her arms again behind and above her head. "If you want to know All, you must live All—though in honour preferring one to the other."
Beside her, on the little table by the hearth, was a paper and pencil. Suddenly she unlocked her hands, bent over and drew a sheet of paper from under the book with which she had covered it on Rachel's entrance. "I was trying to write something when you came in. It is rough and crude,—just the skeleton,—but it's something like what I mean and what I want." She held it out; then, with a deprecating gesture and a shy flush, "If it doesn't bore you—"
Rachel took it and read.
"God that am I,
I that am God,
Mass and Motion and Psyche
Inextricably wound!
We began not; we end not;
And a sole purpose have we,—
Intimately to know
And exalted to taste,
In wisdom and beauty
Perpetually heightening,
The Absolute, Infinite,
One Substance Who Is!
In joy to name
In wisdom to know
All flames and all fruits
From that hearth and that tree!
To name infinite modes,
Eternally to name,
To name as we grow,
And grow as we name.
And stars shall arise,
Beyond stars that we see,
And self-knowledge shall come,
To me in God, God in me—"
Rachel put it down. "I'll think that out a little. We've never had any one in the house just like you."
"I thought," said Hagar, "that Sunday morning I would go to the Catholic Cathedral. If you tell me the way I can find it—"
"You are not a Catholic?"
"No. But I have always wanted so to smell incense.—