This is the whole secret of the practice of Elementalism: it obtains happiness by the most rigid and austere simplification of the means to happiness. - John Cowper Powys

It's as if we were both digging into each other's soul to find a self that was put there before we were born.

Their feelings! When, at this very moment in China, in India, in New York, in Berlin, in Vienna — Good God! . . . their feelings! When, at this moment, if all the pain in the world caused by this accursed personal life, by this accursed individual life were to rise up in one terrific cry . . . it would — —

Life seemed entirely composed of weeping faces, old men sneaking up bedroom-stairs, tombstones with spittle trickling down, and black-edged calling-cards. He felt as if the First Cause of the Universe were a small, malignant grub, radiating a deadly blight in withering, centrifugal air-waves!