Now that it had happened she was afraid, seeing, but not so clearly, what would come afterwards: something that would make her want to leave Morfe and Mamma and go away to London and know the people Richard Nicholson had told her about, the people who would care for what she had done; the people who were doing the things she cared about. To talk to them; to hear them talk. She was afraid of wanting that more than anything in the world.
She saw her fear first in Mamma's eyes when she told her.
And there was something else. Something to do with Richard Nicholson. Something she didn't want to think about. Not fear exactly, but a sort of uneasiness when she thought about him.
His mind really was the enormous, perfect crystal she had imagined. It had been brought close to her; she had turned it in her hand and seen it flash and shine. She had looked into it and seen beautiful, clear things in it: nothing that wasn't beautiful and clear. She was afraid of wanting to look at it again when it wasn't there. Because it had made her happy she might come to want it more than anything in the world.
In two weeks it would be gone. She would want it and it would not be there.
V.
When she passed the house and saw the long rows of yellow blinds in the grey front she thought of him. He would not come back. He had never come before, so it wasn't likely he would come again.
His being there was one of the things that only happened once. Perhaps those were the perfect things, the things that would never pass away; they would stay for ever, beautiful as you had seen them, fixed in their moment of perfection, wearing the very air and light of it for ever.
You would see them sub specie ceternitatis. Under the form of eternity.
So that Richard Nicholson would always be like that, the same whenever you thought of him.