Once, and often then, I saw the gray eyes of my beloved Doctor Stein—unfleshed and isolate and farther apart than they were in nature—looking down on me. They were tender, almost like a woman’s eyes, and a haze of moisture came in them as they strained to focus on a point too far away or too small. He was thinking of me, but what he thought I could not reach....
Pleasanter and more willful journeys my inchoate mind took also to the outer world. On an evening when the rain fell sweet outside and I was shut with my siege, I laid my arid body on a lawn, under a tree, and drank the evening full. I was hungry, and there in my formless consciousness was Sherry’s and a rich menu succulently complete in flavor, color. But these relaxed and personal excursions of my will could not bring Mildred. I could not lunch with her, I could not sit with her beneath a tree. There was no even superficial act possible with my beloved: for her soul’s presence, as soon as I was there beside her, dwelt in my depth ... my hidden depth: I could see her, only with others: lunching, or laughing. I could see her strong limbs press the flanks of a horse as she galloped in Long Island. But since I was excluded, these visions hurt and I did not seek them. I confined my trace of my beloved to making sure that she was there, and well.
By deduction I plumbed my way ever deeper, ever closer to the node of myself: and I learned by elimination, what lived most essentially within me. All of Mildred, save her bright surfaces; all of myself in intercourse with Mildred. I was incapable of a shallow act with Mildred—or with my mother. Hidden, also, the mysterious history of Philip’s murder. Could this be that my connection with his world was after all a morbid, sentimental, subjective nothing? But I could not see even Mildred’s thoughts about Philip! No: my knowledge of his life and death dwelt in the kernel of myself: it was the Secret: it would not give up to my shrewd siege. And therefore all that was enwrapped with it ... all deep and dear ... was also barred from my invading sense.
I struggled, and I failed. Failed utterly. I wore myself out with struggling. But what I saw, down there, was not black darkness. I seemed, rather, to peer into a stormy water. Something is there! But great waves shiver every image from beneath, and when I plunge my eyes into the turmoil, the image goes, because my eyes are whelmed. A looming Presence deep in the node of myself! It is not myself, and yet it is not another. When I draw down to fix it, my mind ... John Mark ... shatters and scatters, and I must rise to air, like a man half drowned.
This way I knew was dissolution. But I could not know if the Presence which I felt and sought was other than the dark womb of Chaos.
Fourteen days.... And now this hour of dusk when I can bear my room no longer. The siege on the Secret may be a failure, or so nearly won that there is no more cause for my stark pressure. I do not know. All I have fought to know is hidden still, though I have broken down many approaches. I must move: and I have no sense if I am going toward my goal or if I am retreating.
But to sit still another hour is impossible. Perhaps I am to die: perhaps I am to admit that I have failed: perhaps I lay my hand at last on a Secret deadlier than death! All these things may be, this alone surely: that I must get out of my room!
l
SPRING is a grimace when one’s heart is gray.... Men and women coming from work: in eyes and mouths the sprites of Spring peer forth at the white clouds. Washington Square is a well of muddy life, and its trees are young girls dancing at the brink ... dangerously close their tinkling hands to the suck and grime of the depths. Sixth Avenue is a long and hollow passage where flows the bilge of New York. Spring cannot hunch low enough to enter. I choose Sixth Avenue. For when one’s heart is gray, Spring is a grimace....