There was a great staircase
up which we went together; there was cloud at the top, but it
seemed to me that there was life and movement behind it; there was
no shadow behind the cloud, but light . . . and there was sound,
musical sound. I went up with the child's hand clasped close in my
own, but at the top he disengaged himself, and went in without a
word to me or a sign, not as if he were leaving me, but as if his
real life, and mine too, were within--just as a child would run
into its home, if you came back with it from a walk, and as if it
knew you were following, and there was no need of good-byes. I did
not feel any sorrow at all then, either for the child or myself--I
simply turned round and came down . . . and then I was back in my
room again . . . and then it was you that I wanted."
"That's all very wonderful," said Howard, musing, "wonderful and
beautiful. . . . I wish I had seen that!"
"Yes, but you didn't need it," said Maud; "one sees what one needs,
I think. And I want to add something, dearest, which you must
believe. I don't want to revert to this, or to speak of it again--I
don't mean to dwell upon it; it is just enough for me. One mustn't
press these things too closely, nor want other people to share them
or believe them. That is the mistake one makes, that one thinks
that other people ought to find one's own feelings and fancies and
experiences as real as one finds them oneself. I don't even want to
know what you think about it--I don't want you to say you believe
in it, or to think about it at all.
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