She ceased to speak, and leaned back in her chair, her hand at the amethysts about her throat. Fay kept his eyes upon her. He was conscious of a resurgence of a morning of a couple of years before when he had cut from a magazine a page bearing a half-tone portrait and had pinned it above his book-shelf. HAGAR ASHENDYNE had said the legend below. The rustle of the palms outside his hut came to him, and the mist of early morning above the waters.
The clock on Hagar's mantel-shelf struck ten with a silvery stroke.
Denny started. "I've got to go--work's calling!"
"I had rather hear you say, at ten o'clock, that sleep was calling," said Hagar. "You're working too hard, Rose says so, and I say so." She looked at him with friendliness deep and tender, soft and bright. "Almost Denny's only fault is that he makes his work his god rather than his servant. At times he's perilously near offering it a human sacrifice. Why will you, Denny?"
"There's so much to do and so few are doing it," said Denny. His eyes were upon the great forest bough, but he seemed to be looking beyond it, down long, long vistas. "I don't know that I worship work. But I want every prisoner of wrong to rebel. And there's no time to waste when you have to pass the word along to so many cells. Sometimes I feel, too, like sitting down and playing, but when I do, I always begin after a little to hear the chains." He laughed. "And I like you and Rose preaching _dolce far niente_! If ever there were two who had the power of work--!"
"All the same," said Hagar, "go to bed before two o'clock, won't you?"
He shook hands around and was gone. "What a wonderful face!" said Lily; and Fay nodded. "A kind of worn, warrior angel--"
Hagar took Lily's hand and kissed it. "You've defined Denny to a nicety! 'A kind of worn, warrior angel'--I like that!... No, don't go! It isn't late."
"We'll stay, then, just one other half-hour. And now," said Lily, "tell me about yourself. We see your name, of course, and what the papers think you are doing. But you yourself--"
"But I myself?" said Hagar. "Ah, if you'll tell me, I'll tell you!" The great bough of red leaves against the wall was repeated in miniature by a spray upon the table, resting in a piece of cloudy Venetian glass. Hagar took it from the vase and sat studying it, colour and line. She sat at ease in the deep chair, her long, slender limbs composed, her head thrown back against green-bronze, an arm bent and raised, the wine-red spray in her hand. "What," she said, "does a man or woman do in a dusty day's march of every great transit? About that is what I and many others have been doing, in this age as in other ages. Millions of minds to reach with a statement that for reasons of weight the column must surmount such a hill and again such a hill, the line of march lying truly on higher levels. The statement did not originate with the messengers of this or any other age; it is social, and the inner urge would send the marchers somehow on, but there is needed interpreting, clarifying, articulation--hence the office that we fill, though we fill it as yet, I know, weakly enough! So it means a preoccupation with communication--ways and means of reaching minds. And that, lacking a developed telepathy, means the spoken and the written word. And that means, seeing we have such great numbers to reach, a continuing endeavour to reach people in congregation. And that means arrangement, going from place to place, much time that you sigh for consumed, some weariness, a great number of petty happenings--and a vast insight into life and the way it is lived and the beings who live it! It means contacts with reality and a feeding the springs of humour and an acquaintance with the truly astonishing forest of human motives. And there is organization work and correspondence, and much of what might be called drudgery unless you can put the glow about it.... And there is the weaving all the time of the web of unity. The human family, and the dying-out before love and understanding of invidious distinctions. The world one home, and men one man, though of an infinite variety, and women one woman, though of an infinite variety, and children one child, and the open road before the three. And back of the three, Oneness. The Great Pulse--out, the Many; in, the One.... So I with others speak and write and go about and work."