knew it because he loved Beatrice. How could humanity become more loving? How could social life come to be founded on love? How can I become more loving? I do not know or love anyone but myself … it did not mean being loved. It was not anything to do with marriage. Dante only saw Beatrice. But this is the awful truth; however one may sit as if one were not condemned and forget again. This is the difficult thing that everyone has to do. Not dogmas. This man believes that there is a God who loves and demands that man shall be loving. That is what will be asked. That is the judgment. It is true because it breaks into you and condemns you. Everything else is distraction and sham. The humble yearning devotion in the voice reading the lines made it a prayer, the very voice a prayer to a spirit waiting all round, present in himself, in everyone listening, in the very atmosphere. It was there, to be had. It was like something left far behind one on a dark road and still there; to be had for the asking, to be had by merely turning towards it. … She looked into the eyes of Dante across the centuries as into the eyes of a friend. But then these people were the same. It was the truth about everybody “the goodwill in all of us”. …
She travelled back towards London in a dream. Her compartment was empty. All the people in the world, full of goodwill without troubling or even thinking about it were away somewhere else. Just as she had learned what people were there was nobody. There was no love in her nature. If there were any she would not have been sitting here alone. If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen how shall he love God whom he hath not seen? There was a catch in that like a riddle. Heads I win tails you lose. … If you keep quite quiet and gentle, asking for nothing, not being anything, not holding on to anything in your life, nor thinking about anything in your life there is something there … behind you … that must be God, the way to Christ; the edge of the way to Christ. Keeping quiet and coming to that you feel what you are and that you have never begun being anything but your evil natural self. You feel thick with evil … oh … that was prayer. One could become more loving. It is answered at once.