Certainly my prestige increased out of all proportion

to anything my talents deserved with any show of justice.

I have said that, so far as I was concerned, there lay nothing

personal in this growth of divining intuition. I must now qualify that

a little. Nothing persuaded me that this guidance, so infallible, so

constant, owed its origin to what men call a being; I certainly found

no name for it; exactness, I think, might place its truest description

in some such term as energy, inner force or inspiration; yet I must

admit that, with its steady repetition, there awoke in me an attitude

towards it that eluded somewhere also an emotion. And in this emotion,

in its quality and character, hid remotely a personal suggestion: each

time it offered itself, that is, I was aware of a sharp quiver of

sensitive life within me, and of that sensation, extraordinarily sweet

and wonderful, which constitutes a genuine thrill.

I came to look for this “thrill,” to lie in wait with anticipatory

wonder for its advent; and in a sense this pause in me, that was both

of expectancy and hope, grew slowly into what I may almost call a

habit. There was an emptiness in my heart before it came, a sense of

peace and comfort when it was accomplished. The emptiness and then the

satisfaction, as first and last conditions, never failed, and that they

took place in my heart rather than in my mind I can affirm with equal

certainty.

The habit, thus, confirmed itself. I admitted the power. Let me be

frank— I sought it, even longing for it when there was no decision to

be made, no guidance therefore needed: I longed for it because of the

great sweetness that it left within my heart. It was when I needed it,

however, that its effect was most enduring. The method became quite

easy to me. When a moment of choice between two courses of action

presented itself, I first emptied my heart of all personal inclination,

then, pausing upon direction, I knew—or rather felt—which course to

take. My heart was filled and satisfied with an intention that never

wavered. Some energy that made the choice for me had been poured in. I

decided upon this or that line of action. The Thrill, always of an

instantaneous nature, came and went— and somebody was pleased.

Moreover—and this will interest you more particularly—the emotion

produced in me was, so far as positive recognition went, a new emotion;

it was, at any rate, one that had lain so feebly in me hitherto that

its announcement brought the savour of an emotion before unrealized. I

had known it but once, and that long years.before, but the man’s mind

in me increased and added to it. For it seemed a development of that

new perception which first dawned upon me during my brief period of

married life, and had since lain hidden in me, potential possibly, but

inactive beyond all question, if not wholly dead. I will now name it

for you, and for myself, as best I may. It was the Thrill of Beauty.

I became, in these moments, aware of Beauty, and to a degree, while

it lasted, approaching revelation. Chords, first faintly struck long

years before when my sense of Marion’s forgiveness and generosity

stirred worship in me, but chords that since then had lain, apparently,

unresponsive, were swept into resonance again. Possibly they had been

vibrating all these intervening years, unknown to me, unrecognized. I

cannot say. I only know that here was the origin of the strange energy

that now moved me to the depths. Some new worship of Beauty that had

love in it, of which, indeed, love was the determining quality, awoke

in the profoundest part of me, and even when the “thrill” had gone its

way, left me hungry and yearning for its repetition. Here, then, is the

“personal” qualification that I mentioned. The yearning and the hunger

were related to my deepest needs. I had been empty, but I would be

filled. For a passionate love, holding hands with a faith and

confidence as passionate as itself, poured flooding into me and made

this new sense of beauty seem a paramount necessity of my life.

Will you be patient now, if I give you a crude instance of what I

mean? It is one among many others, but I choose it because its very

crudeness makes my meaning clear.

In this fevered and stricken African coast, you may know, there is

luxuriance in every natural detail, an exuberance that is lavish to

excess. Yet beauty lies somewhat coyly hid—as though suffocated by

over-abundance of crowding wonder. I detect, indeed, almost a touch of

the monstrous in it all, a super-expression, as it were, that

bewilders, and occasionally even may alarm.