Page 173 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

from what awaited him, fearing to arrive at that towards
which he still turned with longing. How beautiful must be
a soul in the state of grace when God looked upon it with
love!
Frowsy girls sat along the curbstones before their bas-
kets. Their dank hair hung trailed over their brows. They
were not beautiful to see as they crouched in the mire. But
their souls were seen by God; and if their souls were in a
state of grace they were radiant to see: and God loved them,
seeing them.
A wasting breath of humiliation blew bleakly over his
soul to think of how he had fallen, to feel that those souls
were dearer to God than his. The wind blew over him and
passed on to the myriads and myriads of other souls on
whom God’s favour shone now more and now less, stars
now brighter and now dimmer sustained and failing. And
the glimmering souls passed away, sustained and failing,
merged in a moving breath. One soul was lost; a tiny soul:
his. It flickered once and went out, forgotten, lost. The end:
black, cold, void waste.
Consciousness of place came ebbing back to him slowly
over a vast tract of time unlit, unfelt, unlived. The squalid
scene composed itself around him; the common accents,
the burning gas-jets in the shops, odours of fish and spirits
and wet sawdust, moving men and women. An old woman
was about to cross the street, an oilcan in her hand. He bent
down and asked her was there a chapel near.
—A chapel, sir? Yes, sir. Church Street chapel.
—Church?

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