But why should it hold out? Was it not right that the vessel no longer informed by the spirit, should fly asunder? Would not its now useless particles be thrown back swiftly among the other broken potsherds, diminished not one whit for the unceasing purposes of creation? As for the spirit, truly one need never fear for that. The spirit could neither be defrauded nor added unto. It needed no salvation and no pity, returning always to its place till it should be breathed again into some new vessel, fashioned from the immemorial stuff of the old.

It was she only – Joanna – She, Herself – that would be no more if her body were now to perish.

Was this the Law? Was this what her mother had called the Will of God? If so she would yield herself to it, and in faith would even cease utterly to be. She had lived a little … her eyes had beheld the sun … Un pen d’amour, et puts bon jour! That was as Louis saw it. And not Louis only, but a great mass of the world’s sages and poets. Was it not enough? Truly it was a good deal. Truly it had its beauty of pathos, its melancholy fascination, its own deathly-sweet flower of satisfaction.

But it was not enough. Not at least for her. It was no more enough for her than her mother’s transference of fulfilment to another world of sheer spirit had been, nor than Georgie’s relinquishment to the next generation. And was it indeed a thing ordained any more than they? Had it not been said “My Word shall not return unto Me void”? What was oneself, if not a word? Oneself was not all spirit, as Juley had believed. No self could be, without the body, without the form of clay into which a puff of spirit had gone from God’s mouth. In breath alone there is no word. The word comes by the conscious moulding of the lips, by that which gives a preconceived shape to the formless issuing forth of breath.