The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams — Read

Damaris, on that Monday morning, was conscious as she ate her breakfast of one surprising truth. She had, as a matter of fact, almost finished before the consciousness of it came upon her, though the fact itself had been with her since she woke. She sat staring at the last bit of toast on her plate, as she realized that, very surprisingly, she wasn't worrying. Until that moment it had never seemed to her that she did worry very much; other things worried her, but that was different. It was not she who fretted; it was she who was fretted. It occurred to her suddenly that of all the follies of which she had been guilty, and they seemed to have been many and stupendous, none had ever been greater than that. She had always regarded herself as an unchangeable fact, attacked and besieged by a troublesome world. But she could as easily be, indeed at the moment she was, a changeable fact, beautifully concerned with a troubled world. She had been worrying all her life about herself, and now she wasn't worrying any more. It was not perhaps possible for her then to realize that this was because she herself didn't--for the moment--exist for herself. There being for Damaris--in that moment--no Damaris, there was no Damaris for Damaris to worry about. However soon that lucid integrity might become clouded and that renewed innocence inevitably stained, it did then exist. All this she did not perhaps realize, but she did definitely feel the marvellous release. She still wanted to get on with her work--if she could, if she could approach it with this new sense that her subjects were less important than her subjects' subject, that her arrangements were very tentative presentations of the experiences of great minds and souls. But work was less important than her immediate task. She ate the toast and stood up pensively. Here she was, abandoning Abelard--Abelard.the word had a new sound. She saw the brilliant young tonsured clerk, the crowds in the growing University, the developing intellect and culture; she felt the rush and tumult--almost physically she felt it--of the students pouring to hear him, because they were burning to listen, to learn, to.to learn. Damaris twiddled a fork on the table, and felt herself blushing. "The credulous piety." She bit her lip. No, Abelard, St. Bernard, St. Thomas--no, they were not merely the highest form in a school of which she was the district inspector. No, intellect might make patterns, but itself it was a burning passion, a passion stronger even than that other love of Peter Abelard for Heloise, the Canon's niece, which had always seemed to her a pity--a pity not merely for Abelard himself but in general. To learn. Well, she wasn't past learning, thank God. If it had all got to be redone, it should be redone. Anything should be done that fitted in with Anthony and the sunlight and freedom from worry and that stranger thing which she dimly realized had been the central desire of centuries of labour. But to-morrow. To-day there was Quentin.

She went into the kitchen and made herself some sandwiches, considerably to the maid's astonishment. She even attempted a little conversation, but she was feeling so shy that it was not altogether a success. The maid, she realized, was very much on her guard. That was the kind of world that Damaris Tighe had hitherto insisted on making all round her, a world where people were watchful and hostile. She looked at it humbly while she finished the sandwiches; then she went upstairs to her father.