All of Mildred, save her bright surfaces; all of myself
in intercourse with Mildred. I was incapable of a shallow act with
Mildred--or with my mother. Hidden, also, the mysterious history of
Philip’s murder. Could this be that my connection with his world was
after all a morbid, sentimental, subjective nothing? But I could not
see even Mildred’s thoughts about Philip! No: my knowledge of his life
and death dwelt in the kernel of myself: it was the Secret: it would
not give up to my shrewd siege. And therefore all that was enwrapped
with it ... all deep and dear ... was also barred from my invading
sense. I struggled, and I failed. Failed utterly. I wore myself out with
struggling. But what I saw, down there, was not black darkness. I
seemed, rather, to peer into a stormy water. Something is there! But
great waves shiver every image from beneath, and when I plunge my
eyes into the turmoil, the image goes, because my eyes are whelmed. A
looming Presence deep in the node of myself! It is not myself, and yet
it is not another. When I draw down to fix it, my mind ... John Mark
... shatters and scatters, and I must rise to air, like a man half
drowned. This way I knew was dissolution. But I could not know if the Presence
which I felt and sought was other than the dark womb of Chaos. *       *       *       *       *

Fourteen days.... And now this hour of dusk when I can bear my room no
longer. The siege on the Secret may be a failure, or so nearly won
that there is no more cause for my stark pressure. I do not know. All
I have fought to know is hidden still, though I have broken down many
approaches. I must move: and I have no sense if I am going toward my
goal or if I am retreating. But to sit still another hour is impossible. Perhaps I am to die:
perhaps I am to admit that I have failed: perhaps I lay my hand at last
on a Secret deadlier than death! All these things may be, this alone
surely: that I must get out of my room! _l_

Spring is a grimace when one’s heart is gray.... Men and women coming
from work: in eyes and mouths the sprites of Spring peer forth at
the white clouds. Washington Square is a well of muddy life, and its
trees are young girls dancing at the brink ... dangerously close their
tinkling hands to the suck and grime of the depths. Sixth Avenue is
a long and hollow passage where flows the bilge of New York. Spring
cannot hunch low enough to enter. I choose Sixth Avenue. For when one’s
heart is gray, Spring is a grimace.... I am almost cheered by this contrast. I am hungry. I turn east once
more: in the Brevoort café I order a good dinner. I cannot eat. The
mirrors, the hard floor, the so deliberately joyous guests are not
Spring, are brittle pasts of Spring, specimens of Spring long dead,
preserved in alcohol. Spring hurts, yet it is fecund: it may come
nearer to my exiled heart if I am not afraid to be hurt. I walk back toward Sixth Avenue. My long siege of myself seems to be
over and to have left me nothing. I am a little light of head, being
so light of stomach, but my mind is taking on its normal compartmental
tightness, its normal limits: its normal weakness: even its normal
satisfactions. --Is the spell over? And have I dreamed that Mildred sent me on a crazy
quest? _I could see her to-night!_ And if a ghost of that horror still
remained, would we be aware of it, warm in the sweet flesh of our
love?--O Mildred, I am weary, and I hunger. Take me. Wrap me away. Make
me wholly man by being wholly woman. I know this pang of will against its own inevitable surge. I have
passed a phase. But Mildred is not yet there: nor can I reach her heart
save through the heart of myself. I must go on.... The Secret! Sixth Avenue. Rattle of trains like dry words in a mouth obscene with
secrecy. Why do I walk Sixth Avenue again, since I was going to dare
the hurt of Spring? I stop, a small sign in a second-story window
holding me:

  MRS. LANDSDOWNE

... A modest sign ... and a late afternoon at the Institute in Winter. Four of us in our aprons chatting, smoking, the day’s work done. The
windows are black already with the night, shutting in snugly warmth and
fire with us. Ford, whose work is closest to my own, Ford speaks:

“There’s one of them, of all I’ve tested, just one, has authentic
power. An inscrutable hag from London. No incense, no scenery, no
occult traps. And no sentiment, no gush. That’s why she’s poor, I
suppose. Women pass her up for a picturesque liar. A prophetess who’s
not a prima donna, wherever she is, is in a wilderness. But she is
tremendous. Mrs. Landsdowne, her name.”

A dingy vestibule, a double row of plates, brass on chipped plaster,
woodwork greasy brown.... As I press sharp on the bell ... the gas
light was low in a shade dim with dirt ... I hope there is to be
no answer. No answer. I turned to go. The door clicks like a word,
ordering me about. The hall is black reek. I stumble on the stairs. At the first triangular landing, crimson carpet strip, two doors formed
the legs. I passed them to mount still higher. The left door opened and
a narrow form stood framed in the gap. I saw a long hand, I saw eyes. They looked at me and the hand widened the gap of the door. The door
shut me in with blackness and with her whom I knew there beside me. I could feel her move down the corridor. I followed. Her footsteps were
like gray in the hall’s black hush. I did not hear my own. A portière parted, we stood in a large room flush with the rails of the
“L”. Between the brown bare floor and the plaster above that dipped
and swelled a bit about the chandelier, the furniture stood sheer:
dimensional impacts within the cave-like air. A long table faced the
windows. On its either side was a chair upholstered red. In the corner
was a piano and on the stool, twirling about to face us, sat a boy. He
was thin and white. He arose. Mrs. Landsdowne twined a boney arm about
his shoulder. “This is a son of mine,” she broke her silence. The white creature
glanced away from her dark thrust ... passed me ... the portières
seemed not to part for him but to blot him out in an eclipse. The chandelier was not lighted. A student’s lamp cast a pale flush on
the table. A train, crowding of steel and wheel and wood, avalanched
past: by it the hollow room with its dense things was lifted into
dance, a moment’s frenzy that died down, leaving the room a pregnant
atmosphere for this sharp woman. She drew down the shades, she took the
seat nearer the window; she waved me to face her in the chair across
the table. I saw her: I asked myself if her protracted silence was designed that I
might see her, or that she see me. “John Mark,” she murmured, “John Mark. That is clear. And a zigzag
route your coming, strange for a sober and determined man. But you’re
not sober. Drunk with thought and with fasting. Down from a street
that is east to an open Square. What draws you, drives you ... a cloud
on the open Square. Zigzag. West ... north ... east ... north ...
west. Wandering.