"I came near being a coward," he said. "A man who puts an end to his life because he's afraid to face it is a coward. So I tried to see if I could readjust the balance. I fell back on my imagination--and it saved me. Imagination was always my best friend! It took me by the hand and led me into a garden--a secret sort of garden that belongs to the blind, and to no one else. It's the place where the spirits of colour and the spirits of flowers live--the spirit of music, too--and all sorts of beautiful strange things which people who've never been blind can't see--or even hear. They're not '_things_,' exactly. They're more like the reality behind the things: God's thoughts of things as they should be, before He created them; artists' thoughts of their pictures; musicians' thoughts of their compositions--all better than the things resulting from the thoughts. Nothing in the outside world is as wonderful as what grows in that garden! I couldn't go on being unhappy there. Nobody could--once he'd found the way in."
"It must be hard finding the way in!" Dierdre said.
"It is at first--alone, without help. That's why, if I can, I want to help my fellow blind men to get there."
"I've never met a blind woman. Probably I never shall."
"You're talking to one this minute! When I'm with you, I always feel as if I were blind, and you could see."
"No, but I'm unjust to you--I mean, I have been. I must tell you before we go on, because you're too kind, too generous. I'm blind about lots of things, but I do see that, now. I see how good you are. I used to think you were too good to be true--that you must be a _poseur_. I was always waiting for the time when you'd give yourself away--when you'd show yourself on the same level with my brother and me."
"Don't say it! I don't feel that horrid, bitter wish now. I'm glad you're higher than we are. It makes me better to look up to the place where you are. But I wish I could get nearer."
"You are very near. We're friends, aren't we? You don't really mind because I'm from the North and you from the South, and because we don't quite agree about politics?"
"I'd forgotten about politics between you and me! But there are other distances. Do take me into your garden. You say it belongs only to blind people; but if I am blind--with a different kind of blindness, and worse--can't I get there with you? I need such a garden, dreadfully. I'm so disappointed in life."