The next day was Sunday. Zinia and Mimy and Mancy walked early to their church, two miles down the river. Marget and Miss Darcy, Linden and Curtin, went to Alder in the phaeton, drawn by Daniel and Bess. It was as sunny and still a day as might be found in any autumn land, and most beauteous was that forest through which they drove. Anna Darcy was glad to see it again. It rested forever in her mind, a true magic approach. Marget drove, Curtin sitting beside her, Miss Darcy and Richard Linden behind them. The jewel miles went by and the pleasant, pleasant air. Here rose Alder on a green hill, and Alder had three streets, a hundred dwelling houses, and three white-spired churches. The houses were brick or frame, with shady yards and late-blooming flowers. They drove by a small, quaint courthouse, a rambling hotel, and several stores, closed to-day. The trees were maples and Lombardy poplars and a few ancient mulberries. Folk were going to church, and they spoke to Sweet Rocket and Sweet Rocket to them.

Before them rose a church of white frame, set in an ample churchyard, all glowing maples with a mosaic of red and gold leaves underfoot. Street before it and bordering lane held horses and buggies and Fords and Buicks. The second bell had not rung. Men and boys waited around the doors, talk and laughter at a Sunday pitch. Women were entering, some with children in their hands. Sweet Rocket folk, leaving the phaeton, walking up churchyard path, took and gave greeting. They entered the church, Marget's hand upon Linden's arm, just guiding him to a pleasant pew by a pleasant, open window, the weather being yet so warm. Curtin took his seat, and, turning a little, watched the folk enter. He did not know when he had been in a village church like this, nor, indeed, had he been for long in any church at all, barring the cathedrals and churches abroad, into which he went as artist. A clear, sweet sound, overhead, rang the second bell. Men and youths came in; the building filled. A simple place, it was well proportioned and to-day filled with a dreamy, golden, softened light. In that soft, flowing atmosphere, men and women and children were gathered as in a bouquet. The choir assembled, the young woman who was the organist took her place. A woman in the pew behind Curtin leaned over and gave him an opened hymn book. The minister appeared, a kindly faced, small, elderly man. The bouquet became more and more Sunday.

Curtin glanced at Linden. He sat as always, with ease, and a certain still power. He seemed to Curtin as simple and whole as a planet in the sky. This village Methodist church seemed within his frontier, as, when you thought of it, all other places seemed within it. Curtin remembered. They were talking, he and Linden, in Odessa, in their hotel, after having been to a great service in a great church. Linden was telling him that Religion held all religions, and that he, Linden, belonged solely to no one church, but liked at times to go sit in any one of them. He had gone on to say other things, but Curtin—and Curtin remembered this with a certain pang—had yawned, and said that it had been a tiring day and that he would off to bed. "My God, I was crass in those years!" thought Curtin. He still watched Linden, who could not know that he was being watched; and at the thought Linden turned his head and smiled at him. His face said as distinctly as if his voice had uttered it, "Yes, that night at Odessa!"

Again Curtin, startled at first, felt the startling vanish. He thought—and, as on last night, his thought seemed to lay hold upon and give form to a down-draught from some upper region—"Truly the startling should be over mind broken from mind, not over mind beginning to heal!"

He sat in a deep study. There came like a picture into his mind Jesus of Nazareth's parable of the talents. "Ability to perceive thought! If the world should take that talent and improve it, a different world we should have anon!"

"Let us pray," said the minister. When they had prayed, he said, "Let us sing hymn number—"

They sang:

"I will read," said the minister, "from the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew."

Curtin heard read the parable of the talents. He thought: "Intercommunication. It widens and deepens and heightens perpetually. Now it gets to be wireless, independent of gesture or the vocal cords, or the handwriting." There thronged echoes of his experience of the other night. "Intercommunication becomes communion. Communion becomes identity. At last 'we know even as we are known.'"

The reading ended. They sang

All the congregation sang; men, women, and children's piping voices. They sat down. The minister took his text from the parable he had read.

It was a good, plain sermon, in which the preacher said more than he knew he said. The air came in at window, bees buzzed without, a brown butterfly passed. The congregation breathed gently, rhythmically. The sun gave life to the flowers upon the women's and the children's hats. There were young faces and old faces, dull faces and quick faces, intent faces and wandering faces. Some were rich flowers, and others little flowers not far from weeds, but all were in the garden. Curtin thought: "They are like the thoughts and moods of a man, many and various, but all in the man. One Man.... It was Balzac who said, 'There is but one animal.' One Man—his name Adam-Eve, or Humanity, as you choose—or, perhaps, when he finds himself, his name is Christ."

He looked again at Linden, sitting with that pleased and quiet light upon his face. The sermon was not extraordinary, the congregation the average village and country congregation, the church had no especial grace of interior or exterior. Linden was not habit-bound to it, he did not hug the letter of its creed. Any one of those around might say: "No, he does not belong to any church—which is a great pity! No, it isn't his church." Yet Curtin saw that Linden, sitting there, loved this place, the feel of the folk around him, the sense of what they were doing, were striving to do, and, on the whole, were slowly doing. He comprehended that to Linden it was very simply his own, as were the other two churches of Alder, and the colored church down the river, and the Greek church at Odessa. He saw that Linden's possessive was large—Linden's and Marget Land's.

Miss Darcy sat very still, her thin hands crossed in her lap. At first she had listened to the sermon, but now she was in the old church in the old city, and there was another congregation around her, and another clergyman, a kinsman, in the pulpit. At first it was like opening a potpourri jar, and then warmth and light came back to the rose leaves. "I am there, they are here! Never could I do this or feel this until now—or I did it so weakly and palely that it did not seem to count!"

The sermon ended. "Let us pray.... Let us sing." Benediction followed, then a moment's pause, and then the folk turned from the pews and moved slowly toward the doors. There were greetings for Sweet Rocket, and Sweet Rocket greeted in return. All had a grace of friendliness. Anna Darcy thought: "That is another thing that has come or is coming! What does it matter now if your name is or is not on the register of a church? It didn't use to be so. Something gracious and understanding, invisibly binding, is coming!" She thought: "Those two are the most beautiful here, but in their degree all are beautiful. And all move on to completer beauty. Oh, life is coming alive!"

They drove through Alder and by Alder highway, and at last upon that lovely forest road to Sweet Rocket. Curtin and Linden fell to talk of their student days, of such and such teachers and mates, and such and such happenings. "I had forgotten that!" said Curtin, and again, "I had forgotten that!" At last he said, abruptly, "You've got an astounding memory!"

Linden answered, "Oh, we learn how to use and deepen memory!" The smell of the forest, the voice of the forest, circled and penetrated. "I should like to know how you do it," said Curtin.

"It is like all other things. Practice makes perfect."

"It is not only remembering. You remember with a strange understanding of things. You direct later light upon the past. The line is there, the form is there, even the color and tone, but you make it understood as I am very certain we did not understand it then! I see now what we were doing! It's intelligent at last, and bigger."

"All that you have," said Linden, "isn't too much to apply to the past. The past has served you, now serve the past. Serve and redeem! Bring it up, even and great, into the present! To understand past time is to have present power. Only by understanding it can you love it, unless you wish to remain infant and love with infant's love."

The many-hued woods went on, the leafy, narrow, remote road, the scents and sounds, the miracle of many centered into sole delight. The air was so fine you could gather what the upper air must be. Daniel and Bess, the phaeton, the four, stepped and rolled through a magic world, artist world of the Ancient of Days. Here was the river and the flashing water of the ford.

That afternoon they walked upstream as far as the overseer's house. It was shining, late afternoon. They saw, seated on the porch and the porch steps, Roger Carter and his wife, with Guy, her brother, who worked on the farm, and old Mr. and Mrs. Morrowcombe, her parents, paying their Sunday visit. A little Roger, three years old, played absorbedly with a chinquapin string and a rag doll that his grandmother had brought him.

"Let us go across to them," said Marget. "Just so did my father and mother use to sit."

Carters and Morrowcombes made them welcome. Linden and Curtin sat upon the porch steps, Tam beside them. Miss Darcy now played with the young Roger and now listened to Mrs. Morrowcombe's gentle, flowing talk of turkeys, and rag carpets, and Sam come home from the war. Mary Carter had dark eyes and wavy hair, bright color in a round cheek, a shy and tender smile—a Murillo face. She sat holding a year-old babe, and she talked shyly and listened with intent eyes. There listened, too, old Mr. Morrowcombe, with a long, white beard, and a gnarled hand resting on a stick marvelously carved by himself in prison, long ago, in the old war. Roger Carter proved a quick, dry talker, with not a little wit and power of mimicry. He had a way of throwing what he saw and heard and concluded into a homely story, both telling and amusing. He seemed to love to make Linden and Marget laugh, and they loved to draw him out. Curtin saw with what skill they opened fields to him where he might rejoice in his talent. He saw how they understood fellowship.

Presently Marget asked Mary if she might take Miss Darcy into the house and out on the back porch and to the lilac hedge. "Certainly, Miss Marget, you go right in! It's all straight. Go upstairs, too. Anywhere you like."

The two went. "This was mother's room. Here I was born. When I was a little girl I slept in this tiny room next door. The rain on the roof drummed me to sleep. This was the boys' room. This is the back porch, where we did much of the work. It is so lovely and broad! There is the old well. Yonder is the lilac clump where once, in May, I saw the Spirit of the Lilac."

When, half an hour later, they walked homeward along the river bank, there renewed itself the question of prolonging a visit. "Well, I'm going to stay, anyhow," declared Curtin. "I like it better here than at that camp. If you will keep me a month—"

"Oh, we will!"

Anna Darcy said: "I can't stay that long. But I'll stay just as long as I can."

That matter settled, they walked on, quietly, in the amber and violet hour. There was a sound of water, a smell of wood smoke. The house rose before them, richly colored in the sunset.