“Son,” he said, after the pause—and I could hear my memory of the rain, so deep did I fear this quiet. “Son, what’s the matter?”
My face broke. I yearned to bury it in his hands: I managed to smile.
“I don’t know ... yet.”
“I like you, Mark. I believe in you. I wish I could help.”
My gratitude was in my eyes. But something else was there, so that I dared not show my gratitude.
“It is mysterious to me,” I smiled. “I seem to have lost my unity.”
“You are in trouble ... and you talk metaphysics.”
“Oh, if my trouble were some fact!”
The cry of my voice impressed him. I went on:
“You are so intact, so one; how can you heal me? You cannot touch my pain. Even my own mind cannot touch it. My mind, too, like all the words I can speak, is in the world of one: and the horror is, that part of my soul seems to have left that world.”