, I doubt if that "Western ideal," the kind-hearted naturalism
which "makes a fetish of our neighbour's welfare," will hold you long.
Already you "see one door" of escape. I wonder into what starry desert of
heaven it leads.

Do you know, I cannot rid myself of the notion that yours is an enchanted
spirit, always seeking doors of escape; but at the moment of exit the wild
wings that might have borne you out fail. Some earth spell casts you back,
incarnate once more. A little duodecimal of fairy love divides the desires
of your heart and draws one wing down. "The beautiful things of the eye,"
that is your little personal footnote, O stranger, which clings like a
sweet prophecy to all your asceticism and philosophy. And prophecies
cannot be evaded. They must be fulfilled. They are predestined sentences
which shape our doom, quite independently of our prayers I sometimes
think,--like the lily that determined to be a reed, and wished itself tall
enough, only to be crowned at last with a white flag of blooms.

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 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 f