One day Amroth stood beside me as I worked; he was very grave and serious, but with a joyful kind of courage about him.  I pushed my books and papers away, and rose to greet him, saying half-unconsciously, and just putting my thought into words: 

“So it has come!”

“Yes,” said Amroth, “it has come!  I have known it for some little time, and my thought has mingled with yours.  I tell you frankly that I did not quite expect it; but one never knows here.  You must come with me at once.  You are to see the last mystery; and though I am glad for your sake that it is come, yet I tremble for you, because it is unlike any other experience; and one can never be the same again.”

I felt myself oppressed by a sudden terror of darkness, but, half to reassure myself, I answered lightly: 

“But it does not seem to have affected you, Amroth!  You are always light-hearted and cheerful, and not overshadowed by any dark or gloomy thoughts.”

“Yes, yes,” said Amroth hurriedly.  “It is easy enough, when it is once over.  Nothing that is behind one matters; but this is a thing that one cannot jest about.  Of course there is nothing to fear; but to be brought face to face with the greatest thing in the world is not a light matter.  Let me say this.  I am to be with you all through; and my only word to you is that you must do exactly what I tell you, and at once, without any doubting or flinching.  Then all will be well!  But we must not delay.  Come at once, and keep your mind perfectly quiet.”

We went out together; and there seemed to have fallen a sense of gravity over all whom we met.  My companions did not speak to me as we walked out, but stood aside to see me pass, and even looked at me, I thought, with an air half of reverence, half of a sort of natural compassion, as one might watch a dear friend go to be tried for his life.

We came out of the door, and found, it seemed to me, an unusual stillness everywhere.  The wind, which often blew high on the bare moor, had dropped.  We took a path, which I had never seen, which struck off over the hills.  We walked for a long time, almost in silence.  But I could not bear the strange curiosity which was straining at my heart, and I said presently to Amroth: 

“Give me some idea what I am to see or to endure.  Is it some judgment which I am to face, or am I to suffer pain?  I would rather know the best and the worst of it.”

“It is everything,” said Amroth; “you are to see God.  All is comprised in that.”

His words fell with a shocking distinctness in the calm air, and I felt my heart and limbs fail me, and a dizziness came over my mind.  Hardly knowing what I did or said, I came to a stop.

“But I did not know that it was possible,” I said.  “I thought that God was everywhere—­within us, about us, beyond us?  How can that be?”

“Yes,” said Amroth, “God is indeed everywhere, and no place contains Him; neither can any of us see or comprehend Him.  I cannot explain it; but there is a centre, so to speak, near to which the unclean and the evil cannot come, where the fire of His thought burns the hottest....  Oh,” he said, “neither word nor thought is of any use here; you will see what you will see!”