In the night the storm ceased. The household woke to a high, clear, stirring morning, the clouds riding in archipelagoes with, between isles, a sea bluer than the Ægean. The shaken trees had spread a Persian carpet. All the flowers hung heavy with wet, snails marched on the paths, Sweet Rocket glistened.

Randall and Drew must ride away, so at ten o'clock Jim brought their horses.

Marget and Anna Darcy walked through the flower garden. "I am going to Mimy's house for a little. Will you come, too?"

Marget had a basket upon her arm. "It is full of silk and cotton scraps for Julia's quilts. The day I met you in Alder I begged of two or three friends and they gave me all this! It is Julia's intense industry and happiness, piecing quilts."

"Who is Julia?"

"Mimy's lame daughter. Lame in her body and just a little lame in her mind."

"Where does Just So come in?"

"Oh, he's Susan's! Susan has been away upon a visit, but she's home again. Zinia is Mimy's niece, and Jim is her grandson. Mimy and her husband, old Uncle Jack, who is dead, 'belonged,' as they call it, to the Lindens. When Richard bought Sweet Rocket she was living in Alder, and she rode over in a wagon one day and told him she wanted to come home—just like me!" said Marget, with a happy laugh. "The old cabins were tumbling down. Richard built her a real house. He said that any who came and said, 'This is home'—" Her dark eyes looked afar to the valley rim.

"Where does Mancy live?"

"Over there, behind the big field. He and Delia, his wife, and William, who is Roger Carter's right-hand man."

Mimy, in the kitchen, was singing:

Marget stopped at the door. "We're going to your house, Aunt Mimy, with quilt pieces for Julia."

Mimy interrupted her singing. "Are you gwine take company?"

"Well, she isn't company."

"You'll find a mighty mess in that house! I don't think I ought to let you go, Miss Marget! You see, Susan's been away, and Julia can't get around, and when Zinia comes from the big house she wants to read! instead of straightening up. I reckon you better not go."

Marget laughed. "Aunt Mimy, you know how we'll find the house!"

"Well, go along!" said Mimy, gloomily. "Julia'll be glad to get the pieces."

They left the kitchen behind them.

Marget's low, warm laughter sounded again. "Her house is like a pin, and she's so proud of it, and she wouldn't for anything miss having you see it! The same little rhyme is said to every guest we have. And 'read!' Mimy's so proud to see Zinia sit at a table and read! Jim can read, too, but he doesn't like to. But Zinia is fond of books."

Mimy's house rose beside the orchard, a pretty cottage with a dooryard filled with cockscomb and larkspur and marigold. At the gate grew a bush of myrrh, and the porch had over it a gourd vine. Just So sat in the middle of the path, playing with red and blue blocks. At the sound of voices Susan appeared, a clear-brown, neat, and active woman. "Just So, don't you clutter up the path like that! Come this-a-way, Miss Marget!" She took them across the porch, where the gourd vine made so pleasant a pattern, into a little parlor, bright as a pin. They sat and talked, and then Susan said that she would bring Julia, and, leaving the room, reappeared, pushing a wheeled chair. In this sat Julia, who was almost a middle-aged woman, and had a slender, pleasing face, and was only a little lame in her mind.

Marget emptied the basket. "Oh, my!" said Julia, and again, "Oh, my!" With eager fingers she spread the bits of silk and velvet and satin and striped or flowered ribbon. "Flower-garden pieces! It will be a flower-garden quilt. I'll make a quilt like they have in heaven!"

"Shoo! Julia!" exclaimed Susan. "They don't have quilts in heaven. It ain't cold there!"

Julia's face took on an imploring, almost a frightened look. She turned to Marget. "If they don't have quilts I won't have anything to do!"

With all that she knew of Marget Land, Miss Darcy could but wonder at the luminous sweetness, the depth and the play with which Marget, seated by Julia, dealt with the latter's fears. All the bright pieces were spread over the knees of both. "In heaven you'll put rose and blue together, and this violet and green. And look how these flowered pieces go! Your quilts are for warmth and beauty, Julia, aren't they? Shut your eyes and see warmth and beauty, warmth and beauty!" She put her hand over the lame woman's hand. The latter's plaintive look changed, her eyes brightened, and she nodded her head. "Yes! To keep us warm; and they are lovely, like the flowers! Warm like the sun is!"

"Yes. Warmth and beauty—warmth and beauty! So in heaven you're to keep on with warmth and beauty. And you'll learn, too, how well wisdom goes with them. Their quilts aren't just like these quilts, but you won't care for that. You'll be putting together and giving beautiful, bright things!"

Julia caressed a length of flowered ribbon. "That's what I think. They're warm and beautiful, warm and beautiful! And every one I give a quilt to says, 'I'm so glad I've got one!'"

"When you put that piece in, think 'warm and beautiful' for Mrs. Gray. She gave it to you. And Miss Lucy Allen gave the beautiful blue piece."

When they had quitted the porch with the gourd vine, and the dooryard, and the gate by the myrrh bush, and were under the orchard trees, Marget said: "She's been making quilts for twenty years. Perhaps two a year, and into each one goes I do not know what dim thinking and feeling, warmth and beauty, for such and such a one!"

It was Miss Darcy's habit to rest a little in her own room after dinner. In the midafternoon, coming downstairs, she found the door of Linden's study open. Linden turned his head, hearing her step. "Come in! Here are Marget and Curtin."

It was the first time she had entered this room. Her eyes took it in as she crossed the threshold, and found it a simple, grave place, as simple and grave and charged with its own aroma and spirit as a pine wood. It spread a large room, with plenty of space for pacing up and down. The bookcases, the desk, the chairs, an old, long cane and wood sofa were for use. The plain walls held a few prints. In one of the deep windows stood a large globe.

Curtin put Miss Darcy a chair. "I've just come in," he said. There had grown between them, beginning the morning upon which she found him fishing, or not fishing, in the gorge that closed the valley, a quiet liking and friendship, with a sense, perhaps, of standing even in the inner world. "Linden was saying—"

Marget sat before the desk not far from the fireplace, in which burned a light flame. She had been writing, and Linden dictating from his big cane chair by the long window. She had turned from the desk and he had moved his chair to where he sat, half in firelight, half in tawny sunlight. To Anna Darcy's sense the room had strongly that luminousness which in some sort she found in the whole of Sweet Rocket, in valleys, hills, house, and folk. The whole made a sun-filled cluster that, acting as a cluster, redoubled so all effects. But undoubtedly Linden and Marget were the center of the cluster.

"I am glad you have come in," said Curtin. "Linden was speaking of their life here—"

"I told you, you remember, driving through the woods, of our outer life," Marget said. "Sitting here before the fire we had begun to talk of that far larger life within the outer."

Linden spoke. "Martin asked me, and I was telling him as clearly as I could. It is not wholly clear, you must not think, to Marget and me, our progression and our life. 'Man is a bridge,' says Nietzsche. A living bridge that crosses from himself to himself. Always the provisional, the halfway, gone afar even while we say, 'Here am I!' How to name a thing that travels so fast! The life of Marget and me changes and grows, as does yours and yours. The history of one—the history of all. There is at once divine difference, divine sameness. No hand and no word will hold our life!"

"I don't know anyone like you," said Curtin.

"No. But you will presently begin to know more and more who differ from us and yet who belong in the order—the order of those who are aware that present man is a bridge and who begin consciously to act, feel, and know in a larger existence."

"And that is still inward?"

"The world still calls it inward. To those in that existence inward and outward, past, present, and future, come into one. The old words, then, are but retained words of convenience. As to the ultimate mind Martin and Richard, Marget, Anna, are but words of convenience, names for strands of experience. All are comprehended, combined, surpassed."

The sun lighted his hair, his bronzed face, his quiet eyes, the sight of which he seemed so little to miss. After a moment's pause he spoke on: "To-day many and many are aware of the richness of destiny. Some more so, some less so, but aware! Faculties that in a host are but germinal build in and for others realities. The momentary, superficial present, not being the true present, there are, not 'there have been' since the dawn of history, many such men and women. Very many; a host. There are many to-day; to-morrow there will be more. If you regard with intentness you may see the new Humanity forming."

"What of those who neither dream, nor divine, nor wish, who come on so slow?"

"Their not divining nor dreaming nor wishing is more apparent than real. All come on. The slowest, who thinks he has no direction, is drawn unconscious until the day when he discovers the compass."

"Will any never cross?"

"I don't think so."

"And when the last human being has crossed?"

"Then will the others come on into humanity—they that we call the animals. And those behind them will lift to where they were. But our wave goes on into the spiritual world that is the world of subtler matter, vaster energy, understanding at last, love at last, beauty at last. Well, Marget and I are conscious travelers thitherward, as are you and you."

"Ah, you are ahead of me!"

"And of me!"

"In some ways we may be ahead. And in others you may have store of energy and experience that sets you ahead. That matters not in the least. Whitman said that when he said:

Like him, too:

yet lassoing the past and the present with the future!"

Curtin shook his head. "You have powers that are not mine."

"If we have them, they will be yours. Marget and I think that we have, as it were, a blueprint. But not yet do we walk in the full and great temple! We do faintly and weakly what one day we shall do with all vigor. And many things that we do not yet dream we shall do! And you also, you and Anna. When you begin to feel continuity, when no matter where you move you take possession of yourself—"

He rose from his chair, and, standing before them, put a hand upon Curtin's shoulder and a hand upon Anna Darcy's. "'With all your getting, get understanding.' 'The kingdom of heaven is within you.' God is I am."

The sun struck through the western window, the fire burned, the room was lighted and warmed. Flame and stirring air made a low singing.