So far I have come out of most of them reasonably well, though I am neither strong, athletic, very knowledgeable nor devastatingly beautiful. Even when the worst comes to the worst, somehow one eventually does find some reserve of power, of acceptance therefore resurgence, which enables one to emerge after all worthwhile. So I thought now—for though I knew that there are in the World kinds of the worst from which no one can ever recover, I sensed through all my youth and health and resilience, in my toes to the tips of my fingers to my breast-tips to the ends of my hair, and all young and real and mine, that I should always withstand diseases and maiming.

The Priest did not turn to see whether I still followed—now I came to think of it, he had not even turned after he first said, “Come with me” to see whether I followed at all. Indeed it was rather difficult through a crowd of this turbulence.

Presently doubts began to creep through me, but so exalted was I this morning that they did not bother me at all.

“Escape”—that was actually the story of my life.

Only once had I met tragedy face to stark face, and it had 332

not marked me. In deeper moments I wondered if it should have marked me, and knew myself lacking, but for the fact that it had not I blamed the big terrible bird, and from it too I had now separated myself. I! I was learning, really learning at last, the intoxication of the reality of self.

Suppose the Priest is taking me to the lair of the Superlativity, suppose he remembers having seen me as a Northern army-server, and wishes to sacrifice me on the altar of his masters’ hate for their allies? No matter what he means, it is what my fate means that will be.

A white wall leaned before us without warning—the Priest took a bold black key from his belt and unlocked a rotting wooden gate in the wall. This gate he locked again after I’d followed him through it.

We were in a green garden, and so thick was the wall that the garden was also quiet.

Still without a word the Priest led me across the springy sward, past a bed of pink plants, under another arched gate, along a cold, blue-white, stone passage unlit, through a nail-studded black door and into a small rather bare room where he signalled me to seat myself—I asked first for a fountain-room, he directed me farther up the passage, I came back to the room and seated myself on a stool opposite him.

“Well?” I said composedly. It seemed I had lost even that persistent habit of feeling my heart beat hard and irregular every so often in the nerve-racking life I lead.

The Priest leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands in opposite sleeves, conversational mouth pushed a little forward.