Outward things, such as that terrible face on the Waterloo steps or that tethered cow he had seen at Basingstoke, were to him like faintly limned images in a mirror, the true reality of which lay all the while in his mind⁠—in these hushed expanding leaves⁠—in this secret vegetation⁠—the roots of whose being hid themselves beneath the dark waters of his consciousness.

What he experienced now was a vague wonder as to whether the events that awaited him⁠—these new scenes⁠—these unknown people⁠—would be able to do what no outward events had yet done⁠—break up this mirror of half-reality and drop great stones of real reality⁠—drop them and lodge them⁠—hard, brutal, material stones⁠—down there among those dark waters and that mental foliage.

“Perhaps I’ve never known reality as other human beings know it,” he thought. “My life has been industrious, monotonous, patient. I’ve carried my load like a camel. And I’ve been able to do this because it hasn’t been my real life at all! My ‘mythology’ has been my real life.”