There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.
I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I’m very glad therefore you’ve been a part of it.
If I should certainly say to a novice, ‘Write from experience and experience only,’ I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, ‘Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.’
To myself – today – I need say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is now indeed that I may do the work of my life. And I will.
The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.
