nly to
look at him now to see how nice he is. But he was clever. Not very
clever," (she wasn't going to claim too much for him), "but just clever
enough. He used to say such funny, queer, delicious things. And he can't
say them any more."

She paused and went on gathering vehemence as she went.

"And to go and spoil a thing like that, the thing you'd made as fine as
it could be, to tear it to bits and throw the finest bits away--it
doesn't look like an Instinct for Perfection, does it?"

"The finest bits aren't thrown away. It's what you still have with you,
what you see, that's being thrown away--broken up by some impatient,
impetuous spiritual energy, as a medium that no longer serves its
instinct for perfection. Do you see?"

"I see that you're trying to make me happier about Papa. It's awfully
nice of you."

"I'm trying to get you away from a distressing view of the human body.
To you a diseased human body is a thing of palpable horror. To me it is
simply a medium, an unstable, oscillating medium of impetuous spiritual
energies. We're nowhere near understanding the real function of disease.
It probably acts as a partial discarnation of the spiritual energies.
It's a sign of their approaching freedom. Especially those diseases
which are most like death--the horrible diseases that tear down the body
from the top, destroying great tracts of brain and nerve tissue, and
leaving the viscera exuberant with life. And if you knew the mystery of
the building up--why, the growth of an unborn child is more wonderful
than you can conceive. But, if you really knew, that would be nothing to
the secret--the mystery--the romance of dissolution."

His phrase was luminous to her. It was a violent rent that opened up the
darkness that wrapped her.

"If you could see _through_ it you'd understand, you'd see that this
body, made of the radiant dust of the universe, is a two-fold medium,
transmitting the splendour of the universe to us, and our splendour to
the universe; that we carry about in every particle of us a spiritual
germ which is not the spiritual germ of our father or our mother or any
of our remote ancestors; so that what we take is insignificant beside
what we give."

Laura looked grave. "I can't pretend for a moment," she said, "that I
understand."

"Think," he said, "think of the body of a new-born baby; think how
before its birth that body ran through the whole round of creation in
nine months, that not only th