Day rose in sapphire, tranquil, pure, still and sunny, white smoke going straight up from morning fires. Malcolm Smith, mounting his horse, turned again to his mountain. Sweet Rocket bade him good-by, but Linden and Marget said, "All who come together in this consciousness part no more!"

"I believe that."

He rode away, and in the afternoon was back with his work. But the inner eye might view, between mountain and Sweet Rocket, a shimmering, ethereal highway, a nerve, as it were, thrown from space to space, joining and making one.

Robert and Frances and Marget, on this last day of the Danes' visit, walked to the hill with the solitary tree atop. The sapphire day continued, quiet and sunny, the air being of an extreme fineness charged with light. Far and near the mountains made a cup of amethyst. Fields and hillsides at hand were a lighted umber. They saw long rows of stacked corn, and in the meadows hayricks. Beyond the orchard they made out the steep roof of the great barn. There were corn and wheat for the mill, there were stored apples. In the wood below them they heard the woodman's ax.

"I can see," said Robert Dane, "I can see that Humanity is mastering its own organism. I see that it is lifting toward Unitary Consciousness. Here, now, in this present year as in past years, each year now with greater momentum. Reaction and recoil, of course—but back again, and farther! Everywhere shows the swift inter-approach. All over, all through, America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the islands of the sea. The revolutions of our day are woven of it. We are leaving separation and partialness, fortress and dungeon."

"Yes. All our 'movements' rush into the one. All our vortices approach with a fearful joy the Great Vortex. The Correlation will be established, the Summation made. We go to join and strengthen the Ancient Heavens. The Ancient of Days draws and redeems and fuses and Ones another layer of his being. Faster and faster our age begins to see what is happening. The language men use to describe it does not so much matter. The poet names it Life, Beauty, and Joy; the scientific man says Knowledge and Use; the philosopher says Energy and Substance in conscious union; the Hindu says the SELF; our peoples say God.... All one."

They came to the hilltop and stood to look about them. "There is such joy!" went on Marget. "Pain and pleasure outgrown, now blooms the joy! 'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' The being found and the finding. One after another lays hand upon that world, clings, braces himself, draws himself up and over and finds the manna lying around him. Joy, wisdom and power! and the taste of them but begun. Possession still to be possessed—forever and forever!"

They sat beneath the tree and all around sprang the valley and the mountains and Virginia and the world. "Alive—deathlessly alive! The valley and the mountains, Virginia and the world!"

Frances spoke. "I know a woman who speaks in the terms of the East. Is it the Principle of Sensibility—the Buddhic plane?"

"Yes. Atma is yet to arrive. What we see is the light before his face. When he fully comes that is the Day of the Lord. What all work has been toward, all toil, all hoping. As Atma rises in us—as Christ rises in us—comes newer and richer life, fuller and fuller, inner powers and principalities, thrones and dominions, and their objective garments. But when we are the Lord—I know not! There is Light there that is as darkness to us yet."

The exquisite valley heightened its values throughout, became richer. The mountains around hung in the eye like the Delectable Mountains.

"If one grows, all things and all places grow with that one?"

"Inevitably so! The wealth is for all."

"The new consciousness that we feel is a pale film to what will be?"

"Yes. A borderland, the islands fringing the New World. But such as it is it wipes out the old, blind, scattered, little consciousnesses. To what shall be felt and shall be known it is the one leaf of green, it is the olive leaf that the dove brings. But before us are enormous growth, strange and fair adventure, work, joy, love—"

Through the air they felt the ether, through the sunlight they felt the Great Sun. Light and warmth came to them from the Sun behind the sun. It touched, it passed, but each time it came they strengthened.

That night by the fire they sat in silence that was full and rich and understanding. "To-morrow night, here at Sweet Rocket, just Richard and Marget and Drew—and all the rest of us!"

The next day dawned, and still it was Indian summer. Robert and Frances went from place to place, as had gone Curtin and Anna Darcy, saying farewell. "We wish and hope to bring our bodies here again next year. But if that is not done, still, still, still we shall have Sweet Rocket!"

"You have access now to all places and times and peoples. You are through the gate, you two! All your good dreams now will come true. If not in this way then in that. Every dream that does no injury to the Whole."

Richard and Marget, Daniel and the phaeton, took them to Alder. The still forest was clothed to-day in purple. For much of the way silence held within the phaeton as without. But it was the silence that Anna Darcy had early noted. It was rhythmic, it was thronged, it was fused and made into the richest solitude.

Now and then they spoke. Once Robert said, abruptly, "And all the effort of the world is to stand and grow in grace?"

"Just. All the effort. Everywhere! Whether it be stone or plant or animal or man or over-man. And where the Emerging Character is so mighty none is to despise his brother's path or rate of speed. Once it was his own. Everything has been and is our own. Work! but who hates or despises halts and weakens the effort."

"But work!"

"Yes, steadily. In all realms. 'What thy hand findeth to do, do with thy might.' What thy judgment findeth to do. The other name of Lubber Land was Good Enough."

They came to Alder with its churches and sere gardens lying in violet light. Here was the little station—in a few moments they heard the train.

"Good-by!"

"Good-by!"

Frances and Robert looked through the car window. The platform had men, women, and children upon it. Two or three arriving travelers found friends to meet them; there were the workers about the station and the loafers, with country folk and village folk brought by some business, and in the throng Richard Linden and Marget Land. Just the usual village station. Then all of it sprang into light, into music, into significance, into importance. The train moved. There was a cry of "Good-by! Come again!" All seemed to enter into it, to cry it out.

The houses went by, the village street, the hills, the river, and all, all, and this train upon which they found themselves had color and music and significance and importance.

"The I that says of every living thing, 'It is I,' says it and means it and understands it and proceeds to live from it, says it of the total objective, and so takes the objective up into the Subject—that I is over the verge of the old into the New—"

The hills went by, the river gleamed.

Marget and Richard traveled homeward through the purple forest. To-day they hardly used the outer voice. The blind man sat with a smile upon his lips as though he saw, with such a face as could only have come from much seeing. The woman, too, sat still, the body relaxed, the spirit gleaming in the soul. Daniel drew them through the forest; nor did Daniel, either, lack some sense of growth, dim belief in a higher world, dim will to reach it. Below Daniel the forest felt that, and below the forest the rock. The utter stream of pilgrims—

THE END