The Brimming Cup

She stopped to look at him and exclaim, "Why, you're listening! You're

interested. Neale, I believe you are the only person in the world who

can really pay attention to what somebody else says. Everybody else just

goes on thinking his own thoughts."

He smiled at this fancy, and said, "Go on."

"Well, I don't know whether that feeling was already in me, waiting for

something to express it, or whether that phrase in the poem started it.

But it was, for ever so long, the most important thing in the world to

me. I was about fourteen years old then, and of course, being a good

deal with Catholics, I thought probably it was religious ecstasy that

was going to be the great flood that would brim my cup full. I used to

go up the hill in Bayonne to the Cathedral every day and stay there for

hours, trying to work up an ecstasy. I managed nearly to faint away once

or twice, which was something of course. But I couldn't feel that

great tide I'd dreamed of. And then, little by little . . . oh, lots of

things came between the idea and my thinking about it. Mother was . . .

I've told you how Mother was at that time. And what an unhappy time it

was at home. I was pretty busy at the house because she was away so

much. And Father and I hung together because there wasn't anybody else

to hang to: and all sorts of ugly things happened, and I didn't have the

time or the heart to think about being 'an urn too full.'"

She stopped, smiling happily, as though those had not been tragic words

which he had just spoken, thinking not of them but of something else,

which now came out, "And then, oh Neale, that day, on the piazza in

front of St. Peter's, when we stood together, and felt the spray of the

fountains blown on us, and you looked at me and spoke out. . . . Oh, Neale,

Neale, what a moment to have lived through! Well, when we went on into

the church, and I knelt there for a while, so struck down with joy that

I couldn't stand on my feet, all those wild bursts of excitement, and

incredulity and happiness, that kept surging up and drenching me . . . I

had a queer feeling, that awfully threadbare feeling of having been

there before, or felt that before; that it was familiar, although it was

so new. Then it came to me, 'Why, I have it, what I used to pray for.

Now at last I am the urn too full!' And it was true, I could feel, just

as I dreamed, the upsurging of the feeling, brimming over, boiling up,

brimming over. . . . And another phrase came into my mind, an English one.

I said to myself, 'The fullness of life.' Now I know what it is."