It was Royce who, in one illuminating sentence, solved for him the puzzle, pointed out whence his salvation had come. “For your cause can only be revealed to you through some presence that first teaches you to love the unity of the spiritual life... You must find it in human shape.”
He, Hodder, had known this, but known it vaguely, without sanction. The light had shone for him even in the darkness of that night in Dalton Street, when he thought to have lost it forever. And he had awakened the next morning, safe,--safe yet bewildered, like a half drowned man on warm sands in the sun.
“The will of the spiritual world, the divine will, revealed in man.” What sublime thoughts, as old as the Cross itself, yet continually and eternally new!
There was still another whose face was constantly before him, and the reflection of her distressed yet undaunted soul,--Alison Parr. The contemplation of her courage, of her determination to abide by nothing save the truth, had had a power over him that he might not estimate, and he loved her as a man loves a woman, for her imperfections. And he loved her body and her mind.
One morning, as he walked back from Mrs. Bledsoe's through an unfrequented, wooded path of the Park, he beheld her as he had summoned her in his visions. She was sitting motionless, gazing before her with clear eyes, as at the Fates...
She started on suddenly perceiving him, but it was characteristic of her greeting that she seemed to feel no surprise at the accident which had brought them together.
“I am afraid,” he said, smiling, “that I have broken in on some profound reflections.”
She did not answer at once, but looked up at him, as he stood over her, with one of her strange, baffling gazes, in which there was the hint of a welcoming smile.
“Reflection seems to be a circular process with me,” she answered. “I never get anywhere--like you.”
“Like me!” he exclaimed, seating himself on the bench. Apparently their intercourse, so long as it should continue, was destined to be on the basis of intimacy in which it had begun. It was possible at once to be aware of her disturbing presence, and yet to feel at home in it.
“Like you, yes,” she said, continuing to examine him. “You've changed remarkably.”