The Bell

by Iris Murdoch

Paul wanted children, or at least a child, in the decisive and possessive way in which he wanted all the objects which he drew into his life.

Spiritual power was indeed like electricity in that it was thoroughly dangerous. It could perform miracles of good: it could also bring about destruction.

He was conscious of such a fund of love and goodwill for the young creature beside him. It could not be that God intended such a spring of love to be quenched utterly.

To have thought it, to have dreamed it, yes – but to have done it! And as Michael contemplated that tiny distance between the thought and the act it was like a most narrow crack which even as he watched it was opening into an abyss.

Nick had needed love, and he ought to have given him what he had to offer, without fears about its imperfection. If he had had more faith he would have done so, not calculating either Nick’s faults or his own.

So great a love must have contained some grain of good, something at least which might have attached Nick to this world, given him some glimpse of hope.

The first agony passed and Michael found himself still living and thinking. Having at first feared to suffer too much, he later feared to suffer too little, or not in the right way.