Sublime

esoteric

"Alan, in a locked room at the top of this house, a room to which nobody but myself has access, a dead man is seated at a table. He has been dead ten hours now.

this grey monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins,

But Meyrick was always scolding meeting-houses because they were not cathedrals. He has been heard to rave for hours against useful, unpretentious chimney-pots because they bore no resemblance to celestial spires.

lubricious

But now I was in Paradise, for body and soul were molten in one fire and went up in one flame. The mortal and the immortal vines were made one. Through the joy of the body I possessed the joy of the spirit. And it was so strange to think that all this was through a woman—through a woman I had seen dozens of times and had thought nothing of, except

She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I would not dare whisper in the blackest night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness.

The old man looks out at the smears of rain vibrating on the window glass. His smile fades. “But Arthur, there is hope.” The great author quietly says: