Cassiopeia walks away from the village without even knowing that I have seen her; but I know things about Cassiopeia that she does not know. Already I can feel what it is like to be a thought in her head, tranquil and certain; I can see the world as it falls away before her eyes, a world different from my own - everything has a harmony, a structure, a sense of purpose. I follow her without even thinking, because I have no option not to. I follow her because my imagination will never have the power to create her head, her dress, her shoes, the colour of her skin. Even without knowing what she means, I nevertheless know what it means to be her; even as I follow her, it's as if half of me were already beside her, inseparable from the sensation of gentle certainty that seems to fill her, that defines her, that defines the image of her to me.

But though I can follow her for a time, I know already that this afternoon must end. She is human; I am human; we only have a certain strength. The world opposes her certainty with different certainties - the fact that a stride travels a particular distance, the fact that it takes a particular length of time, the fact that those who set out on a journey have an expectation of arriving. Doubtless she is walking to somewhere she has walked before, and therefore, in walking now, she carries with her the significance of her walking, the significance of her past, of the people she knows in the world, of the person she believes herself to be. I cannot join her in that private place; for, if I ever caught up with her, what would I say not only to her but to them? They might be people, but they could as soon be trees, the river, the open fields. How could I share the uniqueness of her relationship to them. What could I say to that shy girl who would look down with embarrassment simply because I addressed her?

All I will be able to tell her is that her name is Cassiopeia - and my knowing this must be the thing that will unite us. I no more know why it will unite us than why I know her name at all. She is like an object which has never been given a name, and therefore which has never lost any part of itself. I know her name is Cassiopeia, because Cassiopeia is the only word that could contain her; its meaning flows into her; she flows into it; Cassiopeia is the dress, the shoes, the style of her hair - all Cassiopeia, all indivisible, all warm, all filled with emotion, all filled with power, all filled with significance, all filled with life. There will only ever be one Cassiopeia; she is the centre from which meaning itself seems to stream. Not love, not grace, not ecstasy - but all of these things, and then something ten times greater than any of them - the meaning of love, the meaning of grace, the meaning of ecstasy, the meaning of meaning itself.

She does not walk quickly, but nevertheless she moves faster than my mind. I try to hold her at each point along the riverbank, to grasp the significance that seems to fill the footsteps behind her, and which is already complete in itself, as if she never needed to arrive anywhere. But I know that she must arrive somewhere; I know that this afternoon must end; I know that at some point, in some way, I will come face to face with her mortality, and I do not know if she will survive it. I realise that what I am pursuing now is only one possible form for a pursuit which could take place over both greater and lesser periods of space and time - that the structure of my pursuit shares the same structure as any idealistic endeavour, and that while it is only wildgrass and hedgerows that intercede today, it could be very different things, people, events.

I realise that she outstrips me because of two things I cannot connect - the fact that she must arrive, and the fact that I do not know the destination; I am held back by the uncertainty of not knowing when she will stop decisively, and that stasis become the culmination of her journey. But there is only one path along the riverbank, and it leads to the churchyard, although from there it may also branch away to any number of different places I have never been. I watch her stop at each stile to lift the hem of her dress; I watch her walking beside the hedgerows, over the fields.

 

It must be her destination; she has stopped walking. I do not know where we are - somewhere past the village, somewhere before the churchyard. Now she is looking left toward the chalk quarries. But I myself cannot stop, since I realise that she is waiting for me to pass, that she must have felt me following her. And yet, to go on past her would be somehow to move beyond meaning. The young woman who stands a little off the path, her back quietly turned - must be the closest meaning and I will ever come to an address.

Can I not, though, wait here without really stopping? The face I only glimpsed for an instant I already know by heart - the shy, dark eyes, the girlish hair, the lips which seem unlikely ever to part.

"Cassiopeia," I say, so that she can overhear me. I don't address her; I wait for her to register surprise, to turn in acknowledgement, to take up the mantle of her identity.

I know that she won't turn; all I know is that I am right - that her name is Cassiopeia, and that I will never have the satisfaction of having this confirmed because precisely what draws me to her is this lack of confirmation, this sense of meaning which requires no confirmation, the constant swish and rustle of her own meaning which will never alight, but which is believed in implicitly, like a kind of faith.

Of course I must move on; I cannot stay here, I say to myself irritably; I cannot go back; I cannot go forward. But I must move on, somehow - a mental motion that puts Cassiopeia to rest, that dispels her outline, that bruises her shoes. Yet I cannot narrate that tearing away from her; even language is not resilient enough to make that break. I should rather stay here forever, calling "Cassiopeia", waiting for her to turn, waiting for her to accept the name, sheltering in her presence from a world larger than my mind.