As I drove away, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it, hopelessly, as ghosts are set to do. I shall never go back, I said to myself. A door had shut, the low door in the wall I had sought and found... Open it now and I should find no enchanted garden. I had come to the surface, into the light of common day, after a long captivity in the sunless coral palaces and waving forests of the ocean bed. I have left behind delusion I said to myself, henceforth, I live in a world of three dimensions, with the aid of my five senses. I have since learned that there is no such world. But then, as the car turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but lay all about me at the end of the avenue…
Charles Ryder
