"I will encounter darkness as a bride"—he was rushing towards that darkness now. The dark closed them in, but they were speeding towards the core of the darkness; the words themselves were swallowing them up. All the miracles of the poets had rent and illumined and charged that night, but the mingling light and dark which was in all easily accepted verse lay far behind them now where the wild rapture of the Africans surged above London. It was as if he had passed from them from something which was himself, to something which was even more himself. His very physical body was being carried in towards the energy which created art. Art... the ancient word so often defiled and made stupid stood for a greatness only partially explored. His body felt the energy opposite him—an energy self-restrained, self shaped. "And hug it in mine arms —" but if the arms could not bear it, if the awful blasting power of that darkness should destroy him as the glory of Zeus destroyed Semele? It was too late now for choice; he was lost and saved at once. Onward and onward, away from the ironic contemplations of the children of the wise world and from the shrieking self-immolating abandonments of the more ignorant sons of rapture; away from young perplexity and young greed; away from Isabel. High-set, as the moon now rising, he saw her, knowing in her daily experiences, her generous heart and her profound womanhood, all that he must compass sea and land to find. This was the separation that had been between man and woman from the beginning; this was fated, and this must be willed. It was the everlasting reconciliation of the everlasting contradiction-to will what was fated, to choose necessity. Perfect for one moment in his heart, he knew the choice taken."
Charles Williams, Shadows of Ecstasy