ecome aware of one clear distinction between William
Sharp and Fiona Macleod. To him, literature was a craft, laboured at
most honestly and enriched with an immense wealth both of knowledge and
of cleverness; but to her, literature was a revelation, with divine
inspirations behind it--inspirations authentically divine, no matter by
what name the God might be called. So it came to pass that _The Pagan
Review_ had only one number. That marked the transition moment, when
Fiona Macleod began to predominate over William Sharp, until finally she
controlled and radically changed him into her own likeness. He passes on
to the volume entitled _The Divine Adventure_, which interprets the
spirit of Columba. Nature and the spiritual meet in the psychic phase
into which Sharp passed, not only in the poetic and native sense, but in
a more literal sense than that. For the Green Life continually leads
those who are akin to it into opportunities of psychical research among
obscure and mysterious forces which are yet very potent. With a nature
like his it was inevitable that he should be eventually lured
irresistibly into the enchanted forest, where spirit is more and more
the one certainty of existence.

For most of us there is another guide into the spirit land. In the
region of the spectral and occult many of us are puzzled and ill at
ease, but we all, in some degree, understand the meaning of ordinary
human love. Even the most commonplace nature has its magical hours now
and then, or at least has had them and has not forgotten; and it is love
that "leads us with a gentle hand into the silent land." This may form a
bond of union between Fiona Macleod and many who are mystified rather
than enlightened by psychic phenomena in the technical meaning of the
phrase. Here, perhaps, we find the key to the double personality which
has been so interesting in this whole study. It was William Sharp who
chose for his tombstone the inscription, "Love is more great than we
conceive, and death is the keeper of unknown redemptions." Fiona's work,
too, is full of the latent potency of love. Like Marius, she has
perceived an unseen companion walking with men through the gloom and
brilliance of the West and North, and sometimes her heart is so full
that it cannot find utterance at all. In the "dream state," that which
is mere nature for the scientist reveals itself, obscurely indeed and
yet insistently, as very God. God is dwelling in Fiona. He is smiling