“Remember this, my boy: you’ve never got to deny the Holy Ghost which is inside you, your own soul’s self. Never. Or you’ll catch it. And you’ve never got to think you’ll dodge the responsibility of your own soul’s self, by loving or sacrificing or Nirvaning—or even anarchising and throwing bombs. You never will. . . .”

Aaron was silenced for a moment by this flood of words. Then he said smiling:

“So I’d better sit tight on my soul, till it hatches, had I?”

“Oh, yes. If your soul’s urge urges you to love, then love. But always know that what you are doing is the fulfilling of your own soul’s impulse. It’s no good trying to act by prescription: not a bit. And it’s no use getting into frenzies. If you’ve got to go in for love and passion, go in for them. But they aren’t the goal. They’re a mere means: a life–means, if you will. The only goal is the fulfilling of your own soul’s active desire and suggestion. Be passionate as much as ever it is your nature to be passionate, and deeply sensual as far as you can be. Small souls have a small sensuality, deep souls a deep one. But remember, all the time, the responsibility is upon your own head, it all rests with your own lonely soul, the responsibility for your own action.”

“I never said it didn’t,” said Aaron.

“You never said it did. You never accepted. You thought there was something outside, to justify you: God, or a creed, or a prescription. But remember, your soul inside you is your only Godhead. It develops your actions within you as a tree develops its own new cells. And the cells push on into buds and boughs and flowers. And these are your passion and your acts and your thoughts and expressions, your developing consciousness. You don’t know beforehand, and you can’t. You can only stick to your own soul through thick and thin.

“You are your own Tree of Life, roots and limbs and trunk. Somewhere within the wholeness of the tree lies the very self, the quick: its own innate Holy Ghost. And this Holy Ghost puts forth new buds, and pushes past old limits, and shakes off a whole body of dying leaves. And the old limits hate being empassed, and the old leaves hate to fall. But they must, if the tree–soul says so. . . .”

They had sat again during this harangue, under a white wall. Aaron listened more to the voice than the words. It was more the sound value which entered his soul, the tone, the strange speech–music which sank into him. The sense he hardly heeded. And yet he understood, he knew. He understood, oh so much more deeply than if be had listened with his head. And he answered an objection from the bottom of his soul.

“But you talk,” he said, “as if we were like trees, alone by ourselves in the world. We aren’t. If we love, it needs another person than ourselves. And if we hate, and even if we talk.”

“Quite,” said Lilly. “And that’s just the point. We’ve got to love and hate moreover—and even talk. But we haven’t got to fix on any one of these modes, and say that’s the only mode. It is such imbecility to say that love and love alone must rule. It is so obviously not the case. Yet we try and make it so.”