In their brief marriage, C.S. Lewis came to realize the immense gift his wife had given him by challenging him to come alive and be more vitally present with her. "How many bubbles of mine she pricked!" wrote Lewis after her early death, comparing her to a leopard who, when it "scented the first whiff of cant . . . sprang and knocked you over before you knew what was happening." He had discovered what the Indian Tantrics had known a thousand years before: "Women are the supreme fire of transformation."
— John Welwood, Love and Awakening