her thinking; after her thinking, her wish to know; after her wish to know, her plunge into books and nature, until dreaming, thinking, knowledge and, above all, love supreme and triumphant had mingled to form a new existence and she had been reborn as it were out of herself.
She had dreamed and thought and questioned it all hastily and feverishly, as though afraid of being late, of feeling her senses numbed, her soul withered by the grey years, before she had lived . . . before she had lived. Hastily, but in all sincerity; and her late awakening had been deep and intense, a mystery to herself and an impenetrable secret to all, for no one knew that she dreamed and thought and questioned knowledge and nature; no one knew that nowadays she looked on a tree, a cloud, a book, a picture with different eyes than in the past, when she had neither eyes nor understanding for tree or cloud, for book or picture, nor found beauty in any; no one saw that something cosmic and eternal flashed before her in that one swift glance of tardy recognition and knowledge; no one knew that she, the aristocrat, felt that keen pity for her day and generation, had learnt to feel it from him, through him. All of it, all of it, all her later life: no one knew it save herself alone . . . And gradually, too, in those intimate conversations, they had come to know something of each other, had learnt—guessing first and then knowing—that they had found each other, late in
