At first she did not discern any of the multitudinous minutiae in the
great evening vision beneath and around her. She only felt conscious of
depth, height, space, colour, mystery, calm. She did not measure. She
did not differentiate. She simply stood there, leaning lightly on
the snowy plaster work, and experienced something that she had never
experienced before, that she had never imagined. It was scarcely vivid;
for in everything that is vivid there seems to be something small, the
point to which wonders converge, the intense spark to which many fires
have given themselves as food, the drop which contains the murmuring
force of innumerable rivers. It was more than vivid. It was reliantly
dim, as is that pulse of life which is heard through and above the crash
of generations and centuries falling downwards into the abyss; that
persistent, enduring heart-beat, indifferent in its mystical regularity,
that ignores and triumphs, and never grows louder nor diminishes,
inexorably calm, inexorably steady, undefeated--more--utterly unaffected
by unnumbered millions of tragedies and deaths.
Many sounds rose from far down beneath the tower, but at first Domini
did not hear them.
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