THE WAVES 
not feel Why hurry? Why catch trains? The sequence 
returns ; one thing leads to another—the usual order. 
“ Yes, but I still resent the usual order. I will not let myself 
be made yet to accept the sequence of things. I will walk; I 
will not change the rhythm of my mind by stopping, by look- 
ing : IT will walk. I will go up these steps into the gallery and 
submit myself to the influence of minds like mine outside the 
sequence. There is little time left to answer the question ; my 
powers flag; I become torpid. Here are pictures. Here are 
cold madonnas among their pillars. Let them lay to rest the 
incessant activity of the mind’s eye, the bandaged head, the 
men with ropes, so that I may find something unvisual be- 
neath. Here are gardens; and Venus among her flowers; 
here are saints and blue madonnas. Mercifully these pictures 
make no reference ; they do not nudge; they do not point. 
Thus they expand my consciousness of him and bring him 
back to me differently. I remember his beauty. © Look, where 
he comes,’ I said. 
“ Lines and colours almost persuade me that I too can be 
heroic, I, who make phrases so easily, am so soon seduced, 
love what comes next, and cannot clench my fist, but vacillate 
weakly making phrases according to my circumstances. Now, 
through my own infirmity I recover what he was to me : my 
opposite. Being naturally truthful, he did not see the point of 
these exaggerations, and was borne on by a natural sense of 
the fitting, was indeed a great master of the art of living so 
that he seems to have lived long, and to have spread calm 
round him, indifference one might almost say, certainly to his 
own advancement, save that he had also great compassion. A 
child playing—a summer evening—doors will open and shut, 
will keep opening and shutting, through which I see sights 
that make me weep. For they cannot be imparted. Hence our 
loneliness ; hence our desolation. I turn to that spot in my 
mind and find it empty. My own infirmities oppress me. 
Thete is no longer him to oppose them. 
““ Behold, then, the blue madonna streaked with tears. 
This is my funeral service. We have no ceremonies, only 
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