The rhythm of the storm, the rhythm of the room, the rhythm of the fire, passed into a vast, still sense of ordered movement. "Of old, and now, and to-morrow--everywhere and all time--until we return above time and place, and division is healed."
They felt a lightness, a detachment. The spirit soared with the mind and made it look.
"There is the natural man and there is the spiritual man. That last finds himself in all selves, and all selves in him. There is the spiritual man, and there is the divine man who works with power. Both are words of inclusion. It is to leave the old small I for the spiritual I, and it is to transcend the last and enter that which is above. Then is left the shrunken pond for the ocean! Only we say it upside down. It is the ocean that overflows and drinks up the pond."
"When God enters life there will still be said I?"
"Otherwise, still pond and ocean, still separation! Who shall lose his life here shall find it. But never sink to thinking that it is what in the past we have meant when we said I! When God enters how shall he not say I? But it is the ocean now that speaks! The pond is gone."
They sat still, and the fire played and leaped.
Through the night the rain beat and the wind blew, but at dawn it cleared. There was wreckage about the world, but life laughed and took her wreckage and built with it anew. Valley, hills, and mountains gleamed like precious stones. Navies of clouds rode for a while, then melted into the deep azure. The upper sea hung so calm and clear that down through it to the earth bottom ran light that seemed intenser than the light of every day.
Curtin said good-by, and went. Marget and Linden drove him to Alder.
The river ran swollen, the road lay deep in leaves, few leaves now on the trees. The trees stood still in vast ranks. They seemed to be holding something, to be turning it over in mind. There flashed across Curtin, "Who lifts, all lifts."
"Yes!" said Marget, beside him, as though he had spoken.
It was what he carried with him from this valley.
Linden and Marget drove home through the wood. "How still it is! Barring foot and wheel on the wet leaves you would say there was no stir. We are passing pine trees. How fragrant!"