Marguerite Young (c. 1960’s)

She had cried outside many gates of stillness where only her own voice had cried back to her, bouncing like the echo, little doubt, or like a ball, and sometimes she had heard that echo of which there had been no voice as there had been no shadow of her, and she had knocked at many doors which had not opened to her knocking, and some said that she was only the shadow and thus did not recognize herself, for the shadow knew not the substance although the substance knew the shadow, and some said that there had never been a lady but this lady who was lost and wandering through mountain storms where wandered also the sails of yachts white as that snow through which they wandered from pole to pole — but how much more successful she had been in her failure than if only one door had opened to her knock. She had not been committed to one destiny. Who heard the knock of her dead heart? Success would have limited her as if with a golden compass had been drawn an arc omitting all but her path between two stars, but failure left many questions unanswered, or so it seemed to the old lawyer in that still house where he had been of two opinions, of two minds as to the door.

Miss MacIntosh My Darling, 652