He was accepted without more ado. A deep natural sympathy

existed between them, recognized intuitively from that moment of first

mutual inspection at Marseilles. It was instinctive, almost as with

animals. The action of the boy in coming round to his side,

unhindered by the father, was the symbol of utter confidence and

welcome.

There came, then, one of those splendid and significant moments

that occasionally, for some, burst into life, flooding all barriers,

breaking down as with a flaming light the thousand erections of shadow

that close one in. Something imprisoned in himself swept outwards,

rising like a wave, bringing an expansion of life that “explained.” It

vanished, of course, instantly again, but not before he had caught a

flying remnant that lit the broken puzzles of his heart and left

things clearer. Before thought, and therefore words, could overtake,

it was gone; but there remained at least this glimpse. The fire had

flashed a light down subterranean passages of his being and made

visible for a passing second some clue to his buried primitive

yearnings. He partly understood.

Standing there between these two this thing came over him with a

degree of intelligibility scarcely captured by his words. The man’s

qualities—his quietness, peace, slowness, silence— betrayed somehow

that his inner life dwelt in a region vast and simple, shaping even

his exterior presentment with its own huge characteristics, a region

wherein the distress of the modern world’s vulgar, futile strife could

not exist—more, could never have existed. The Irishman, who had never

realized exactly why the life of To-day to him was dreadful, now

understood it in the presence of this simple being with his

atmosphere of stately power. He was like a child, but a child of some

pre-existence utterly primitive and utterly forgotten; of no

particular age, but of some state that ante-dates all ages; simple in

some noble, concentrated sense that was prodigious, almost terrific.

To stand thus beside him was to stand beside a mighty silent fire,

steadily glowing, a fire that fed all lesser flames, because itself

close to the central source of fire. He felt warmed, lighted,

vivified—made whole. The presence of this stranger took him at a

single gulp, as it were, straight into Nature—a Nature that was

alive. The man was part of her. Never before had he stood so close and

intimate. Cities and civilization fled away like transient dreams,

ashamed. The sun and moon and stars moved up and touched him.

This word of lightning explanation, at least, came to him as he

breathed the other’s atmosphere and presence. The region where this

man’s spirit fed was at the centre, whereas to-day men were active

with a scattered, superficial cleverness, at the periphery. He even

understood that his giant gait and movements were small outer

evidences of this inner fact, wholly in keeping. That blundering

stupidity, half glorious, half pathetic, with which he moved among his

fellows was a physical expression of this psychic fact that his spirit

had never learned the skilful tricks taught by civilization to lesser

men. It was, in a way, awe-inspiring, for he was now at last driving

back full speed for his own region and—escape.

O’Malley knew himself caught, swept off his feet, momentarily

driving with him… .

The singular deep satisfaction of it, standing there with these

two in the first moment, he describes as an entirely new sensation in

his life—an awareness that he was “complete.” The boy touched his

side and he let an arm steal round to shelter him. The huge, bearded

parent rose in his massiveness against his other shoulder, hemming him

in. For a second he knew a swift and curious alarm, passing however

almost at once into the thrill of a rare happiness. In that moment, it

was not the passengers or the temper of To-day who rejected them; it

was they who rejected the world: because they knew another and

superior one—more, they were in it.