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rather, that it is everywhere. It is in reality, in simplicity, in peace. It is here, inside these walls. The real and the supernatural are one and the same. There can no more be mystery in life than there can be a fourth dimension.
    I, like other men, am moulded out of infinity. But how confused it all was to me! And I dreamed of myself, who could neither know myself well nor rid me of myself--myself who was like a deep shadow between my heart and the sun.

CHAPTER VII
    The same background, the same half-light tarnishing them as when I first saw them together. Amy and her lover were seated beside each other, not far from me.
    They seemed to have been talking for some time already.
    She was sitting behind him, on the sofa, concealed by the shadow of the evening and the shadow of the man. He was bending over, pale and vaguely outlined, with his hands on his knees.
    The night was still cloaked in the grey silken softness of evening. Soon it would cast off this mantle and appear in all its bare darkness. It was coming on them like an incurable illness. They seemed to have a presentiment of it and sought refuge from the fatal shadows in talking and thinking of other things.
    They talked apathetically about this and that. I heard the names of places and people. They mentioned a railway station, a public walk, a florist.
    All at once she stopped and hid her face in her hands.
    He took her wrists, with a sad slowness that showed how much he was used to these spells, and spoke to her without knowing what to say, stammering and drawing as close as he could to her.
    "Why are you crying? Tell me why you are crying."
    She did not answer. Then she took her hands away from her eyes and
looked at him.
    "Why? Do I know? Tears are not words."
    . . . . .
    I watched her cry--drown herself in a flood of tears. It is a great thing to be in the presence of a rational being who cries. A weak, broken creature shedding tears makes the same impression as an all- powerful god to whom one prays. In her weakness and defeat Amy was above human power.
    A kind of superstitious admiration seized me before this woman's face bathed from an inexhaustible source, this face sincere and truthful.
    . . . . .
    She stopped crying and lifted her head. Without his questioning her
again she said:
    "I am crying because one is alone.
    "One cannot get away from one's self. One cannot even confess anything. One is alone. And then everything passes, everything changes, everything takes flight, and as soon as everything takes flight one is alone. There are times when I see this better than at other times. And then I cannot help crying."
    She was getting sadder and sadder, but then she had a little access of pride, and I saw a smile gently stir her veil of melancholy.
    "I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone."
    Disturbed to see her growing distress, he tried to raise her spirits.
    "We cannot say that, we who have reshaped our destiny. You, who have achieved a great act of will--"
    But what he said was borne away like chaff.
    "What good was it? Everything is useless. In spite of what I have tried to do, I am alone. My sin cannot change the face of things.
    "It is not by sin that we attain happiness, nor is it by virtue, nor is it by that kind of divine fire by which one makes great instinctive decisions and which is neither good nor evil. It is by none of these things that one reaches happiness. One /never/ reaches happiness."
    She paused, and said, as if she felt her fate recoiling upon her:
    "Yes, I know I have done wrong, that those who love me most would detest me if they knew. My mother, if she knew--she who is so indulgent--would be so unhappy. I know that our love exists with the reprobation of all that is wise and just and is condemned by my mother's tears. But what's the use of being ashamed any more?