ol,
which obscured her thoughts from me, though when she came to know me
and to trust me, as she did later, the cloud was gradually withdrawn;
and I perceived that there must be a perfect sacrifice of will, an
intention that the mind should lie open and unashamed before the thought
of one's friend and companion, before the vision can be complete. With
Amroth I desired to conceal nothing, and he had no concealment from me.
But with the girl it was different. There was something in her heart
that she hid from me, and by no effort could I penetrate it; and I saw
then that there is something at the centre of the soul which is our very
own, and into which God Himself cannot even look, unless we desire that
He should look; and even if we desire that He should look into our
souls, if there is any timidity or shame or shrinking about us, we
cannot open our souls to Him. I must speak about this later, when the
great and wonderful day came to me, when I beheld God and was beheld by
Him. But now, though when the girl trusted me I could see much of her
thought, the inmost cell of it was still hidden from me.

And then, too, I perceived another strange thing; that the landscape in
which we walked was very plain to me, but that she did not see the same
things that I saw. With me, the landscape was such as I had loved most
in my last experience of life; it was a land to me like the English
hill-country which I loved the best; little fields of pasture mostly,
with hedgerow ashes and sycamores, and here and there a clear stream of
water running by the wood-ends. There were buildings, too, low
white-walled farms, roughly slated, much-weathered, with evidences of
homely life, byre and barn and granary, all about them. These sloping
fields ran up into high moorlands and little grey crags, with the trees
and thickets growing in the rock fronts. I could not think that people
lived in these houses and practised agriculture, though I saw with
surprise and pleasure that there were animals about, horses and sheep
grazing, and dogs that frisked in and out. I had always believed and
hoped that animals had their share in the inheritance of light, and now
I thought that this was a proof that it was indeed so, though I could
not be sure of it, because I realised that it might be but the thoughts
of my mind taking shape, for, as I say, I was gradually aware that the
girl did not see what I saw. To her it was a different scene, of some
southern country