This had carried him along in a continuous communion with ideals, certainly realised in part, either in the conditions of his own being, or in the actual company about him, above all, in Cornelius.
Surely, in this strange new society he had touched upon for the first time to-day--in this strange family, like "a garden enclosed"-- was the fulfilment of all the preferences, the judgments, of that half-understood friend, which of late years had been his protection so often amid the perplexities of life.

Here, it might be, was, if not the cure, yet the solace or anodyne of his great sorrows--of that constitutional sorrowfulness, not peculiar to himself perhaps, but which had made his life certainly like one long "disease of the spirit." Merciful intention made itself known remedially here, in the mere contact of the air, like a soft touch upon aching [108] flesh.

On the other hand, he was aware that new responsibilities also might be awakened--new and untried responsibilities--a demand for something from him in return.

Might this new vision, like the malignant beauty of pagan Medusa, be exclusive of any admiring gaze upon anything but itself?
At least he suspected that, after the beholding of it, he could never again be altogether as he had been before.
NOTES 93.

+Emanuel Swedenborg, Swedish mystic writer, 1688-1772.