Of the illuminating quality there could be no doubt whatever. One felt like
walking out of a forest on to a plain - there was not much to see but one had
plenty of light. No, there was not much to see and, frankly, for a considerable
time I didn't even attempt to perceive anything. It was only the illuminating
impression that remained. It remained satisfactory but in a passive way. Then,
about a week later, I came upon a book which as far as I know had never attained
any prominence, the rather summary recollections of an Assistant Commissioner of
Police, an obviously able man with a strong religious strain in his character
who was appointed to his post at the time of the dynamite outrages in London,
away back in the eighties. The book was fairly interesting, very discreet of
course; and I have by now forgotten the bulk of its contents. It contained no
revelations, it ran over the surface agreeably, and that was all. I won't even
try to explain why I should have been arrested by a little passage of about
seven lines, in which the author (I believe his name was Anderson) reproduced a
short dialogue held in the Lobby of the House of Commons after some unexpected
anarchist outrage, with the Home Secretary. I think it was Sir William Harcourt
then. He was very much irritated and the official was very apologetic. The
phrase, amongst the three which passed between them, that struck me most was Sir
W. Harcourt's angry sally: »All that's very well. But your idea of secrecy over
there seems to consist of keeping the Home Secretary in the dark.«
Characteristic enough of Sir W. Harcourt's temper but not much in itself. There
must have been, however, some sort of atmosphere in the whole incident because
all of a sudden I felt myself stimulated. And then ensued in my mind what a
student of chemistry would best understand from the analogy of the addition of
the tiniest little drop of the right kind, precipitating the process of
crystallization in a test tube containing some colourless solution.
    It was at first for me a mental change, disturbing a quieted-down
imagination, in which strange forms, sharp in outline but imperfectly
apprehended, appeared and claimed attention as crystals will do by their bizarre
and unexpected shapes. One fell to musing before the phenomenon - even of the
past: of South America, a continent of crude sunshine and brutal revolutions, of
the sea, the vast expanse of salt waters, the mirror of heaven's frowns and
smiles, the