"It is something like this," said Linden. "We are One Being with its mighty potencies. All that comes in comes to us, all that goes forth goes from us. The points that take, ponder, sort, combine, alter to better liking; the mighty poles, the mighty afferent and efferent that flow from pole to pole, all that is movement, that is gravitation, that is cohesion, that is justice, that is harmony, that is love, are Ours. We go as we have gone through time, from and toward—the from that is also toward, the toward that is also from. But something beyond Time as we have known it, beyond Space and Causation as we have known them, increases upon us. Consciousness in some sort of the whole orb, awareness through and through, is momentously upon us to-day. In the end all desire is desire for that."

"We shall move then in four-space?"

"If you choose to put it so. It is an allowable figure. All that present language can devise is but a word, a figure, a symbol. What we mean is the next advance in consciousness. When you have it you know it."

They were treading a slender path through October fields. Now they were in a great, climbing cornfield, all stacked corn like brown wigwams, and here and there upon the brown and stubbly earth the orange of pumpkins. The air folded them in violet and gold dust and faint frankincense. The hills had changed in color, so many leaves being shaken down. On days like this the mountains were evidently entranced. It was Indian summer before the Indian summer time. "A new consciousness?" said Frances Dane, walking with Curtin. "A farther-on consciousness? It is in the air to-day!"

"Yes."

"Wise men saying, 'We have seen His star in the east—' Oh, that's a figure!"

"There is some Reality, or thousands of us would not be hearkening, as we are hearkening.... A new man, a new creature.... It's a consummation devoutly to be desired!"

The heaped corn stood around, the orange globes made constellations on the earth. They were now well up the slope, at their feet Sweet Rocket and the little sliding river. All was reflected, all was veiled, but now and again eyes looked through the veil. Reaching the top of the hill they found there a tall, solitary tree—a black gum—and built around it a bench. It linked in Curtin's mind with the sycamore before the overseer's house.

They sat upon the bench and upon the ring of brown grass that ran around the tree. The view was fair and they rested in silence. It was Anna Darcy who noticed how much silence there was at Sweet Rocket—silence that sang, that caressed. Moments went by, silence held them, fair solitude, sense of one person here alone. Tam moved, coming nearer to Linden. The latter's hand dropped to Tam's head. Anna Darcy heard a low sigh of relief and burden lifted. It came, she thought, from Frances Dane, who sat near her upon the grass. But it might have come from more than Frances, from all.

Stillness and silence deepened. There grew a cathedral sense, a desert, an ocean sense. Into that entered a wealth of light and strength. A vast wave of freedom, an access of life, lifted them. They had life and they had it more abundantly. They seemed to themselves to flash together, and of them all was made a god. For an instant there held an intense vision of this valley and of Sweet Rocket transfigured. Color and sound lived, every movement was of joy. That broke away, vanished like the image of a rose into the image of a garden of ten thousand. Then that was gone into an image of all the earth, and then that into intense, sheer, mighty Living, with small regard to old space and time, abounding, keen, a Reality leaving old reality behind.

"When it is all done, when it is all known, all felt, when we are fully, completely ourself, when we remember our Godhood and live it, when we do not look through storm for the lighthouse ray because we are Light, when we do not cry Father and Son because we are both and know it, when there is glory of home, glory of health, glory of love—"

Who had spoken they did not know; it seemed their common voice. Perhaps it was Linden, but if so he spoke as their common voice. Into it came not only the voice of the seven there, but the voice of old Mr. Morrowcombe and the Carters, and of Mrs. Cliff and Mimy and Zinia and Mancy and the others; not just the voice of Sweet Rocket, but the voice of Alder, and of many an Alder, big and little, the voice of the city and the country, the land and the sea. "To be well! Oh, rise within me, truest Self, with healing in thy wings!"

The great, golden feeling passed, leaving echoes, leaving memory. These folk were separate again where they had been one, but not so separate. In and out hovered that breath of transfiguration, a day of spring in late winter, dying, but with a tongue to tell of a time when it would not die. Where all had been vivid, singing, laughing, now was the wonted gentleness of this valley, a dreaminess shot with gold, taking and giving, but doing it subtly, silently, only now and then bestowing evidence of a vast interpenetrative life, showing like the eyes through the veil of this Indian summer day.

They went down through the corn and out by a gate, set in the gray and lichened rail fence, where grew sumac and farewell-summer and the feathery traveler's-joy. They walked in meadows by the river, and at last through the orchard, and so to the house. Mimy, in the kitchen, was singing:

In the evening Frances played again to them, and the rich and sweet music filled the old room. The violin put by, they talked by the fire; then Linden said, "Read for a little while, Marget." She took up a volume of Blake, and read. "Read that letter to Butts." She read: