The opening of doors is a mystic act:  it has in it some flavor of the unknown, some sense of moving into a new moment, a new pattern of the human rigmarole.  It includes the highest glimpses of mortal gladness:  reunions, reconciliations, the bliss of lovers long parted.  Even in sadness, the opening of a door may bring relief:  it changes and redistributes human forces.  But the closing of doors is far more terrible.  It is a confession of finality.  Every door closed brings something to an end.  And there are degrees of sadness in the closing of doors.  A door slammed is a confession of weakness.  A door gently shut is often the most tragic gesture in life.  Every one knows the seizure of anguish that comes just after the closing of a door, when the loved one is still near, within sound of voice, and yet already far away.

The opening and closing of doors is a part of the stern fluency of life.  Life will not stay still and let us alone.  We are continually opening doors with hope, closing them with despair.  Life lasts not much longer than a pipe of tobacco, and destiny knocks us out like the ashes.

The closing of a door is irrevocable.  It snaps the packthread of the heart.  It is no avail to reopen, to go back.  Pinero spoke nonsense when he made Paula Tanqueray say, “The future is only the past entered through another gate.”  Alas, there is no other gate.  When the door is shut, it is shut forever.  There is no other entrance to that vanished pulse of time.  “The moving finger writes, and having writ”—­

There is a certain kind of door-shutting that will come to us all.  The kind of door-shutting that is done very quietly, with the sharp click of the latch to break the stillness.  They will think then, one hopes, of our unfulfilled decencies rather than of our pluperfected misdemeanors.  Then they will go out and close the door.

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