He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistable prejudice in your favour. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched —love for instantce—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next. I was saying there was a willow tree. Its shower of falling branches, its creased and crooked bark had the effect of what remains outside our illusions yet cannot stay them, is changed by them for the moment, yet shows through stable, still, and with a sterness that our lives lack.
Pretendamos de nuevo que la vida es una sustancia sólida, en forma de globo, a la que damos vueltas en nuestros dedos. Pretendamos que podemos elaborar una historia sencilla y lógica, de modo que, después de despachar un asunto —el amor, por ejemplo—, podamos proseguir, en orden, y despachar el siguiente. Decía que había un sauce. Su lluvia de ramas descendentes, su arrugada y retorcida corteza, producían el efecto de lo que queda fuera de nuestras ilusiones pero carece de la capacidad de refrenarlas; de lo que queda alterado de momento por esas ilusiones pero se ve estable, quieto y con la dureza de la que carecen nuestras vidas.
