So that it is among its foremost distinctions that its heart
is steeled. . . ."
There this odd fragment ended and White was left to resume the
interrupted autobiography.
2
What moods, what passions, what nights of despair and gathering
storms of anger, what sudden cruelties and amazing tendernesses are
buried and hidden and implied in every love story! What a waste is
there of exquisite things! So each spring sees a million glorious
beginnings, a sunlit heaven in every opening leaf, warm perfection
in every stirring egg, hope and fear and beauty beyond computation
in every forest tree; and in the autumn before the snows come they
have all gone, of all that incalculable abundance of life, of all
that hope and adventure, excitement and deliciousness, there is
scarcely more to be found than a soiled twig, a dirty seed, a dead
leaf, black mould or a rotting feather. . . .
White held the ten or twelve pencilled pages that told how Benham
and Amanda drifted into antagonism and estrangement and as he held
it he thought of the laughter and delight they must have had
together, the exquisite excitements of her eye, the racing colour of
her cheek, the gleams of light upon her skin, the flashes of wit
between them, the sense of discovery, the high rare paths they had
followed, the pools in which they had swum together.
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