And do not expect me to pray you through these open ways of escape. I only watch them to wish you may never win through. Something has changed me and set my heart to a new tune. I must have already made my escape, for it seems to me that I am on the point of becoming immortal. As I pass along the world, I am Joy tapping the earth with happy heels. I am gifted all at once with I do not know what magic, so that all my days are changed to heaven. And almost I could start a resurrection of “beautiful things” only to see you so glad. But that will never be. There are always your wings to be reckoned 61 with; and with them you are ever ready to answer the voices you hear calling you from the night heavens, from the temples and tombs of the East.

Yesterday I saw a woman sitting far back in the shadows of the church wearing such a look of sadness that she frightened me. It was not goodness but sorrow that had spiritualised her face. And to me she seemed a wan prisoner looking through the windows of her cell, despairing, like one who already knows his death sentence. “What if after all I am mistaken,” I thought, “and there really is occasion for such grief as that!” I could think of nothing but that white mystery of sorrow piercing the gloom with mournful eyes. And when at last the “penitents” came crowding the altar with quaking cowardly knees, I fell upon mine and prayed: “Dear Lord, I am Thine, I will be good! Only take not from me the joy of living here in the green valleys of this present world!” Was such a prayer more selfish than the sobbing 62 petitions of the penitents there about the church-rail, asking for heavenly peace? I have peace already, the ancient peace of