… unless John were to become a person Mr. Harrison could see, touch, smell, and hear, and whose real presence would in no way be denied. If a man were to appear from out of the cloudiness of Mr. Harrison’s existence who looked at him, spoke to him, and pressed his hands in a gesture of real concern, that would have mattered. The emptiness of the past and the future can never be filled with words but only by the presence of a man.
