Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

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'Then the pains of limitation,' he remembered asking, 'the anguish of impossible yearnings that vainly seek expression—these are symptoms of growth that in the end may produce something higher and nobler?'

'Must! 'he heard the answer amid a burst of happy laughter, as though from where she stood it were possible to look back upon earthly pangs and see them in the terms of joy; 'just like any other suffering! Like the stress of heat and pressure that turns common clay into gems.'

He interrupted her swiftly, high hopes crowding through his spirit like the rush of an army.

'Then the life in us all—the "Bits of Reality "in you and me—have passed through all possible forms in their huge upward journey to reach our present stage?' He stammered amid a multitude of golden memories, half captured.

'Of course. Uncle Paul, of course!' he caught deep, deep within him the silvery faint reply. 'And your love and sympathy with trees, winds, hills, with all Nature, even with animals'—again her laughter ran out to him like a song—'is because you passed long ago through them all, and half remember. You still feel with them, and your imagination for ever strives to reconstruct the various beauty known in each stage. You remember in the depths of you the longings of every particular degree—even of the time when your soul was less advanced, and groping upwards as your London waifs grope even now. This is why your sympathy with them, too, is deep and true. You half remember.'