learned to love rightly and truly; while so many, just from some lack of beauty, some homeliness or ungainliness of feature or carriage, missed the one kind of love that would have sustained and fed them—­have never been held in a lover’s arms, or held a child of their own against their heart.  And so,” she went on smiling, “many of them lavished their tenderness upon animals or crafty servants or selfish relations; and grew old and fanciful and petulant before their time.  It seems a sad waste of life that!  Because so many of them are spirits that could have loved finely and devotedly all the time.  But here,” she said, “they unlearn their caprices, and live a life by strict rule—­and they go out hence to have the care of children, or to tend broken lives into tranquillity—­and some of them, nay most of them, find heavenly lovers of their own.  They are odd, fractious people at first, curiously concerned about health and occupation and one can often do nothing but listen to their complaints.  But they find their way out in time, and one can help them a little, as soon as they begin to desire to hear something of other lives but their own.  They have to learn to turn love outwards instead of inwards; just as I,” she added laughing, “had to turn my own love inwards instead of outwards.”

Then I told Cynthia what I could tell of my own experiences, and she heard them with astonishment.  Then I said: 

“What surprises me about it, is that I seem somehow to have been given more than I can hold.  I have a very shallow and trivial nature, like a stream that sparkles pleasantly enough over a pebbly bottom, but in which no boat or man can swim.  I have always been absorbed in the observation of details and in the outside of things.  I spent so much energy in watching the faces and gestures and utterances and tricks of those about me that I never had the leisure to look into their hearts.  And now these great depths have opened before me, and I feel more childish and feeble than ever, like a frail glass which holds a most precious liquor, and gains brightness and glory from the hues of the wine it holds, but is not like the gem, compact of colour and radiance.”

Cynthia laughed at me.

“At all events, you have not forgotten how to make metaphors,” she said.

“No,” said I, “that is part of the mischief, that I see the likenesses of things and not their essences.”  At which she laughed again more softly, and rested her cheek on my shoulder.

Then I told her of the departure of Amroth.

“That is wonderful,” she said.

And then I told her of my own approaching departure, at which she grew sad for a moment.  Then she said, “But come, let us not waste time in forebodings.  Will you come with me into the house to see the likenesses of things, or shall we have an hour alone together, and try to look into essences?”

I caught her by the hand.

“No,” I said, “I care no more about the machinery of these institutions.  I am the pilgrim of love, and not the student of organisations.  If you may quit your task, and leave your ladies to regretful memories of their lap-dogs, let us go out together for a little, and say what we can—­for I am sure that my time is approaching.”